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ETHEL’s LOoveE-LIFE. 





ETHEL’S LOVE-LIFE: 


A Hobe. 


BY 


Marcaret J. M. Sweat. 


NEW YORK: 
Rupp & CarLeTon, 310 Broapway. 


MDCCCLIX, 


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by 
RUDD & CARLETON, 


ln the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 
District of New York. 


BE. CRAIGHEAD, 
Printer, Stereotyper, and Electrotyper, 
Caxton Building, 
81, 83, and 85 Centre Street. 


rs \ ety f SP Ee ea 
at —_— 
— 


Go the Bender. 


Ir there is aught of truth within these pages, it will 
assert itself without assistance and without explana- 
tion. 

If there is any power of expression in these words, it 
will speak to the hearts which recognise it ; and if there 


is any charm of sentiment beneath the imperfect utter- 


(2.5 


ance, it lays itself at the feet of those who give it 


welcome. 


é 
ALt™ 


1S Wy 14 W Rok 


“J 


— > Poot +2 
a i + 
a. § SF wae YF 


Ee 
ys ae Ms 


ae 





“I am a part of all which I have met; 
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough 
Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades 
For ever and for ever when I move.” 
‘TENNYSON. 


Ada a 


ate ed Jen Wats 





ETHEL’s LOVE-LIFE. 





LETTER FIRST. 


DEAREST AND TRUEST OF FRIENDS, 

You ask me to tell you something of my 
childhood and my home, with which, though know- 
ing me so well, you are still unfamiliar. Though the 
retrospect of vanished years must cause me pain, 
though the past has in it an eternal regret, which sits’ 
like the skeleton at an Egyptian feast, in the midst of 
the present joy that fills my heart, though tears rise 
to my eyes as I recall my sufferings, and self-reproach 
utters its mournful words as I recount my errors and 
my ignorances,—still I will not shrink from the reve- 
lation of my whole self to you. You who know my 


heart with all its strength and all its weakness, all its 
: + 


10 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


intensity of feeling and all its impetuosity of action, 
should know also the history of my past influences, 
the external environments and inner springs which 
have*combined to make me what I now am. I will 
look back steadily upon my old self, and faithfully 
repeat to you what the past reveals to me. Two 
years ago you had never seen me; we who are now 
all in all to each other, whose pulses beat in magnetic 
sympathy, had never met. ‘T'wo years ago my inner 
self was changed, old things passed away, all things 
became new,—old deadness gave place to new vita- 
lity, old passions were extinguished, old loves and 
hatreds were outgrown and thrown aside in one fresh, 
vigorous, new-born impulse of my whole nature. 
Never since then have I disturbed their repose, but 
now, at the magic power of your word, I reanimate 
them to a galvanic existence. I will call up at your 
bidding, the forms of the past, which, though now but 
weird-like phantoms in the sunshine which surrounds 
me, and with its healthy glow shows them to be 
unsubstantial and harmless, were once the giants of 


my battle-field, and strode fiercely and relentlessly 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 11 


upon their mighty errands to my soul. Once more 
they shall assume their grand proportions, and play 
their parts before your eyes. I shall no longer fear 
them, for the enchanter is near me to lay them again 
at rest. You shall know all that I had suffered when 
I met you, the master of my heart—all that made me 
the poor and prostrate thing I was when your love 
and your strength raised me again to life. For this I 
must recall my childhood and its externalities; I must 
paint the portrait of the little child, that you may bet- 
ter comprehend the woman; and show you the bud in 
which so many embryo leaves lay folded and almost 
invisible, that you may recognise the flower when it 
blooms into the fulness of glowing, panting, luxuriant 
life. The environments of our first years color 
our whole future, and, whatever that future may be, 
we never wholly forget or leave off the tone which 
we then acquired. The restraint of some of our grow- 
ing powers, and undue forcing of others, distort the 
mature, when that which first bent the child-plant is 
forgotten ; the crushing of sweet and tender feelings 


in a young and impressible heart will render the most 


12 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


susceptible nature callous, or force it to keep silence 
when it would gladly speak. ‘Too much restraint and 
too rigid discipline distress and injure the eager 
nature of the child, break the natural impulsiveness, 
and produce disastrous results in later life; while the 
absence of all direction and control, the lack of judi- 
cious suggestion and loving vigilant aid, allow the 
young impulses to run riot; the weeds grow as fast as 
the flowers, and a wilderness instead of a garden is 
the result. All the influences which act upon the 
child, possess an enormous accumulative power for 
good or evil in the time to come. The mould, still 
plastic, may receive distortion, which will be always 
visible in the finished statue. 

My childhood was peculiarly calm in its external 
environments; all that made it individual and pheno- 
menal was hidden in the recesses of the little struggling 
consciousness within. Nursed in the lap of luxury, 
I was almost undisturbed by ungratified wishes, and 
rarely thwarted in my attempts to obtain anything 
that my childish tastes craved. Seldom required by _ 


circumstances or urged by temperament to go out of 


Ethel’s Love-Life. ee: 


myself, without companions of my own age with 
whom to compare my experiences, I accepted without 
wonder and without thought the daily pleasures of 
my life. Not inclined to the usual sports of children, 
and finding in my rare association with them neither 
sympathy nor satisfaction, I lost the frolic carelessness 
of childhood long before my cheek had parted with its 
infant roundness, or my form attained to any but the 
most tiny proportions. My mind was filled with 
vague questionings upon all mysterious subjects; I 
moved through an enchanted land, seeing and ponder- 
ing over many wonders full of strange fascination for 
me. I did not, however, feel inclined to say anything 
of these fancies to those about me, for an instinct told 
me that they were sacred to me alone, so I kept them 
in my own heart with simple and loving reverence. 
My precocity of imagination was accompanied by a 
grave and quiet demeanor and a reserve of manner 
which protected me from notice, and my peculiarities 
of thought remained almost unsuspected. I kept 
nearly all my questionings safe within my own breast, 


seeking their answer only in my books and in unre- 


14 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


mitting observation of those older than myself. My 
eyes alone told the story of my eager quest, and I 
sometimes saw those I was watching grow uneasy 
beneath my strange glances; sometimes too I met, 
from those far older than myself, an answering look of 
sympathy, which, though I could not understand its full 
import, thrilled my child-heart with mysterious power. 

As I grew older, and intellectual cravings awoke 
within me, I found close at hand all that could occupy 
and satisfy my mind. My studies were active but 
desultory, continued but undirected, kept up only by 
my own eagerness, and devoid of all stimulus from 
outward difficulties, I felt no sharp mental needs 
which only my own hard-working ingenuity might 
hope to supply, but had merely to stretch forth my 
hand and grasp whatever seemed worth having. A 
too luxurious and easily obtained intellectual nourish- 
ment, enervates even while it cultivates the mind; 
it weakens the creative power, destroys originality, 
and substitutes an exotic fastidiousness for the strong, 
natural growth of intellectual acuteness. This 


becomes doubly dangerous when the passions are 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 15 


growing up in their own strength, fed by the charms 
of dreamland fancies, and beneath the tropical influ- 
ences of highly-wrought romances and the passionate 
utterances of poetry. I grew to womanhood under a 
hot-house cultivation, intense, unceasing, but also 
undirected and undisciplined. Mine was naturally a 
hungry, grasping mind; it would have grown strong 
by labor and have taken care of itself, had there been 
nothing near to pamper it. The rough weather of 
deprivation would have made it rugged and vigorous; 
in anything less than the absolute lavishness of intel- 
lectual wealth which surrounded me, it would, I think, 
have followed some decided bias and have wrought 
out some positive result. It would have saved me 
much effort at self-discipline in later years, had I been 
trained in a more self-denying school, and been 
thrown more upon the native strength of my own 
mind. As it was, I revelled in utter freedom, and 
whiled away the precious hours in day-dreams over 
the hoarded labors of other minds, lazily following in 
paths made smooth and easy forme. My health was 


delicate, and though I was not often seriously ill, I 


6 Bihel's “Tove. 


was always fragile in appearance and requiring care- 
ful watching, so that I was shut out from all those 
invigorating physical influences which ordinarily 
keep the balance between the child’s growing body 
and expanding mind. 

For the same reason all plan of formal scholarship, 
all routine of education, was for a long time impractica- 
ble. Had not my own insatiate love of knowledge led 
me to study, my first years would have been passed in 
quiet ignorance; as it was, my own instinct prompted 
me to sufficient intellectual industry. An occasional 
examination into my attainments by my mother more 
than satisfied her maternal ambition, and though she 
often wondered how I obtained my knowledge, and 
was really desirous that I should invigorate my bodily 
health by exercise,and leave my books for amusement 
out of doors, yet I was, on the whole, left to follow my 
own inclination. Indeed, the smile of pleasure which 
rose to her lips at any indication of quickness on my 
part, was a far more powerful stimulant to acquisition 
for me, than she was aware of, and completely 


_ destroyed the effect of her gentle suggestions of recrea- 


Ethel’s Love-Life. Ag 


tion N ot yet old enough to comprehend the differ- 
ence between knowledge and wisdom, I fancied that 
in books alone I could find all I needed, and many an 
hour when I was supposed to be in the playground, I 
was hidden behind the heavy window curtains of the 
library, studying some volume that had captivated my 
imagination. My father’s library was a very exten- 
sive one, the accumulation of many years and various 
tastes;—among the volumes were numerous old 
romances and histories, rare and quaint collections 
of voyages and travels, with all of which I made 
acquaintance, and over which I bent for hours, some- 
times with sagacious interest, sometimes only with 
puzzled fascination. I reasoned with Mentor and 
Telemachus in the island of Calypso, or travelled 
confidingly with Gulliver; I pondered upon the 
mysteries of the Church Catechism, or grew faint 
over the Book of Martyrs. The narratives of the 
Bible had a peculiar charm to me, and I was familiar 
with them all, long before I knew what relation in 
time or space they bore to my own life. I wept 
bitterly when I discovered that I was a Gentile and 


18 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


lived a long way from Jerusalem. But nity sorrows 
as well as my questionings I kept within my own 
breast, and no one knew how busy my young mind 
was, or felt the quick beating of my heart when the 
conversation of those around me turned upon any of 
the subjects which filled me with eager interest. I 
had not that inborn genius which creates spontane- 
ously, and as a necessity unto itself, but I possessed a 
good deal of that active talent which makes constant 
use of the materials laid in its way, and builds them 
up into a thousand various forms. 

Yet I was, in the ordinary sense, extremely indo- 
lent. I lay wrapt for hours in dreams—sweet, but 
very vague and apparently unprofitable. As I grew 
older, this habit of aimless reverie took from me more 
and more my mental vigor, my imagination sub- 
dued my reason, my fancy enchained my intellect. 
Creating for myself a charmed atmosphere of romance, 
I breathed it till I was thoroughly im>ued with its 
spirit, and hardly knew which of my thoughts were 
really representative of my original self. 


My home was luxurious in the extreme, the abode 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 19 


of wealth, not suddenly acquired, but of long heredi- 
tary descent, sitting easily and gracefully upon its 
possessors, and showing itself in the perfection of the 
general effect, and the refined harmony of the whole 
domestic movement, never obtruding itself coarsely 
and repulsively in vain and unmeaning ostentation. 
Every adornment, which a refined taste could sug- 
gest, was present; lavishness of expenditure showed 
itself in every direction, the only restraint upon 
luxury being that which the fastidiousness of care- 
fully and highly cultivated taste itself imposed. 
There was no over-loading of expensive upholstery 
and gaudy display of unnecessary finery, but a com- 
pleteness of finish, an elegance of detail, a solidity 
of comfort, a reality of splendor. It was in this 
extreme of luxury that my pleasant childhood pass- 
ed—for it was pleasant in spite of the sad hours 
which the sensitiveness of my temperament caused 
me, but which were independent of my environments, 
and often chased away by the buoyancy of my dispo- 
sition, which made my moods vary in most capricious 


fashion, and gave me the appearance of being strangely 


20 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


contrastive in my manifestations. But for the reserve 
of my nature, which always more or less restrained 
my expression, the extremes to which my inner 
movement vibrated must have often excited astonish- - 
ment; as it was, a veil hung ever between me and 
my companions, and I walked on my own path with- 
out molestation, fulfilling the general courtesies of 
the child-life without difficulty, because I knew of 
nothing else within the serene atmosphere of my 
home. Everything around me was so delightful, 
so apparently spontaneous in its coming, that I was 
a complete Sybarite before I knew that I was in a 
position at all unusual, and in which a power beyond 
myself had placed me. I did not reason on the 
matter at all, but resigned myself without difficulty 
to enjoyment. My mind found enough to occupy 
and amuse itself in alternating seasons of eager acqui- 
sition and of silent reverie. For a long time my 
speculative and analytic faculties confined them- 
selves to the subjects which interested me in my 
books, and took little notice of the outside world; but 
after awhile a tendency to morbid doubt and restless 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 21 


scepticism developed itself within me, and rose into 
stronger and stronger force till it gained complete 
mastery over me. What I have suffered from the 
analysis of my dearest hopes, the morbid distrust of . 
my truest and warmest faiths, the bitter questioning 
of my most generous impulses, no one, who has not 
suffered from the same cause, can understand. While 
still a child I was a victim to miserable doubts and 
fears which rarely assail any but mature minds, and 
experienced mental agony which I now look back 
upon with surprise, when I remember how young I 
then was. Unable to resist, yet always dreading and 
shrinking from the exercise of these demoniac facul- 
ties, I have gone from the light and glory of my new- 
born hopes into the utter darkness of my questionings 
and my doubts; have dissected and brought into 
naked exposure my trusts and faiths till their bare 
and bleeding nerves lost all life and beauty, and I 
threw them away as worthless; always more or less 
conscious that it was my own murderous process 
which had made them so—often weeping in the 


bitterness of full knowledge that they were originally 


22 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


full of health and beauty, and ought to have been 
cherished and permitted to grow into their grand 
spiritual proportions. I have cast away the flowers 
that were budding at my side, seeing in them only 
vile weeds,—have tortured my own heart till analysis 
and doubt became a part of myself. I look back 
upon the earliest years of my life as the time when 
the sunshine was not yet obscured by these clouds— 
I look forward with undoubting hope to a time when, 
beneath the sunlight of your calm, high nature, I 
shall throw off the last vestige of this morbid gloom 
and sit down free for ever from its mocking shade. 
You have already done so much towards restoring my 
heart and mind to a healthy and vigorous tone, that 
I willingly resign my whole nature to you, to receive 
from you a new impulse and a new strength. But I 
am wandering away from the little narrative of my 
external life which I mean to lay before you, not 
with biographical minuteness of detail, but in frag- 
ments and detached sketches of those incidents and 
persons which seem, to my maturer judgment, to have 


had the most powerful influence upon me, and to 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 23 


have done most towards forming my mind and heart. 
I must first paint the portraits of my immediate 
family, and set forth what I may call my inherited 
characteristics and peculiarities. 

My father has a disposition as easy as his circum- 
stances, his life is as equable as his serene brow 
betokens his spirit to be. His career has always been 
successful within the limits to which his calm and un- 
ambitious nature confines itself—his judgment is 
sound, his integrity undoubted, his sense of honor 
quick and keen. His imagination has always been 
subordinate to his slower sense, and he is rarely 
hurried into any impetuosity of speech or action. 
From him I inherit a certain quiet pertinacity, a per- 
severing patience, which forms the ground-work of 
both natures. With this is, naturally enough, con- 
nected great strength of prejudice and prepossession, 
tenacity in regard to impressions once thoroughly 
established in the mind, and great unwillingness to 
retreat from positions once asserted. Nothing short 
of an irresistible conviction can effect a change of 


opinion in either, but, once convinced, no false pride 


24 Ethel’s, Love-Life. 


deters from frank and open acknowledgment of the 
first mistake. The apparent slowness with which our 
opinions are made up on matters of grave import and 
involving decided action, arises in him, from a general 
moderation of temperament and impartiality of judg- 
ment, in me from the activity of the analytical and 
sceptical faculties, which force me into extended and 
intimate relations with any subject which seems tc 
me of importance, and which admits of a variety of 
arguments. My father possesses a calm decision of 
manner and a dignity of aspect which command 
respect; a heart and hand “open as day to melting 
charity,” a tenderness of feeling quite marvellous in 
one who has seen so clearly and so much of the false- 
hood of the world. Hxempt by happy temperament 
from inward storms, by easy circumstances sheltered 
from outward struggle, he has yet not been unmind- 
ful of the commotion and jarring of the world 
about him. His observations, however, have tended 
to increase the natural contemplativeness of his cha- 
racter, and to produce a somewhat saddened acqui- 


escence in things as they are, rather than a determi- 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 25 


nation to work for changes and reformations. He is 
supereminently a contented man, and moves always in 
a quiet little atmosphere of his own, which seems 
quite impenetrable to the influences which make 
others so restless. 

The resemblance I have mentioned, is the only one 
I bear to my father—in most other points I am singu- 
larly hke my mother, though even here the similarity 
ceases in some particulars deeply affecting my per- 
sonality. In fact, the existence of this element of 
patience, lying as it does in me deep down in my inner- 
most nature, beneath the impetuous and rapid current 
which flows upon the surface and seems to many to 
embrace my whole self, necessitates very marked dif- 
ferences between her vivacious temperament and my 
own. The external resemblance I bear to my ‘little 
mamma” you yourself have often noticed, and there 
are other interior similarities quite as remarkable. 
In the tone of our minds, in the keen quest for new 
light, the fearless confronting of intellectual problems, 
as well as in the predominance of an involuntary 


sarcasm, and the alternations of buoyant hopes and 
2, 


26 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


self-created despairs, in short, in most of those move- 
ments of being which seem to be, not so much the 
result of our own volition as the irrepressible manifes- 
tations of the inner soul—we are strangely alike. A 
sympathy almost mysterious, has often revealed to 
each the inmost workings of the other’s heart. Ina 
certain hauteur of manner and an unconscious cold- 
ness of demeanor in general intercourse, we are also 
much alike, as well as in a weakness of physical 
organization and susceptibility to all nervous impres- 
sions. Our general indifference of manner is merely 
the outside covering which masks hearts full of pas- 
sionate impulses, and alive to the most tender and 
delicate ministrations of love. Among our friends 
we become spontaneously expressional and self-forget- 
ful, so that we appear to possess highly contrastive, 
if not absolutely contradictory natures, one which the 
world at large comes in contact with, the other that 
which goes forth to meet the beloved circle of our 
friends. And although these friends sometimes mur- 
mur at the harshness of the judgment which the out- 


side world may pass upon us, in its ignorance of the 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 27 


reverse side of our natures, and feel inclined to claim 
for us a more general love than we obtain, we our- 
selves have never quarrelled with the verdict. The 
love of those we love best has always been sufficient 
for us both, and it has never failed us in our need. 
A more general popularity, with its insatiate demands, 
would be a troublesome acquisition for either of us, 
and a poor exchange for the loyal devotion we win 
from those admitted to our inner circle. The great 
law of compensation is in nothing more perceptible 
than in the rigid justice with which nature supplies 
the heart—demands of her different children, and 
equalizes the claims which different temperaments 
make upon her. I always question the strength and 
genuineness of those emotions of which the possessors 
declare themselves unable to obtain any appreciation, 
and to win any return. The great cause of uneasiness 
among these sensitive hearts, arises from their desire 
to obtain a different kind of appreciation or admira- 
tion from that which the circumstances admit of. 
Those formed to attract a general but somewhat care- 


less approbation, sigh for the concentrated devotion 


28 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


of a few lofty natures; those to whom a few cling 
with unswerving loyalty, but to whom the general 
world is indifferent, too often crave a wider circle of 
influence. 

In the absence of outward fluctuations, our family 
circle was kept in action by the marked contrasts 
existing among its members. Rarely is there a wider 
difference of character than existed between my 
father and my mother, and between my brother and 
myself; and the life and motion caused by the friction 
among ourselves were, when I was still quite a child, 
increased and varied by the entrance of two new and 
quite different elements in the persons of two orphaned 
cousins. My mother was all fire and impetuosity, 
enthusiastic in her sentiments, fluent in her expression 
—with a nervous organization so susceptible that it 
often threatened to shatter her slight frame ;—my 
father quiet, moderate, cool, and somewhat ponderous. 
The differences between my brother and myself were 
of a more subtle and delicate nature, and were often 
almost obliterated by the action of a few sympathetic 


impulses. Our intercourse, especially in my child- 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 29 


hood, was almost always stormy, for I never could 
learn submission to his superior age—the difference 
between us being six or seven years—and it was not 
till we both grew older and calmer that our storms 
were made bearable by the halcyon days which were 
sure to follow,—days when the joyous and genial 
portions of our two natures came forth to greet each 
other, and gave us charming intervals of communion 
and sympathy. The foundation of earnest and devo- 
ted attachment was laid, when Death took him from 
me just when his beauty and his strength had matured 
into magnificent perfection, and when my heart had 
found in him a protector and a guide through the 
most perilous passage in my own life. Has loss was 
to me an irreparable one;—all the youthful differences 
of disposition had died out between us or been 
merged into those quite compatible with loving inter- 
course as man and woman ;—our habits of thought 
were growing daily more alike, and association had 
become healthful and invigorating to us both. His 
personal beauty was of the highest order. His dark 


grey eye was always changing as his moods changed, 


30 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


the sunny and beaming glance of mirthful enjoyment 
was followed by the introverted gaze of the profound 
thinker, the serene glow of deep enthusiasm by the 
flashing glare of anger at continued resistance. His 
soft dark hair clustered in heavy masses above his 
broad, pale forehead, his frequent smile revealed his 
beautiful teeth in gleaming whiteness, his form was 
tall and athletic in health, and graceful and plant in 
his long illness. It brings tears to my eyes and sor- 
row to my heart that these have passed away for ever. 

When I was about ten years old my cousins Louisa 
and Emily came to reside with us. Louisa, the eldest, 
was about twenty, and possessed of remarkable per- 
sonal beauty. Even my childish admiration was 
roused by her charming face and animated manner, 
and while she remained in our family a degree of social 
gaiety much greater than usual prevailed. She wasa 
thorough coquette, and quite unscrupulous in regard 
to the result of the admiration she delighted to 
awaken. She laughed at the unsuccessful suitors 
whom yet she had previously exerted herself to 


win, and my poor father was worried continually 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 31 


with the complaints of disappointed swains. It was 
a joyful day for him when she at length condes- 
cended to make a final choice, and the rapidity 
with which he disposed of the business arrange: 
ments of the marriage, which devolved on him as 
guardian, was so unlike his usual moderation, that 
it was evident he was momently apprehensive of a 
change of mood on the part of the bride elect. 
The wedding, however, took place before Louisa 
had been with us a twelvemonth, and before her 
caprices had completely worn out the patience of 
those whose difficult duty it was to remedy or to 
excuse her inconsistencies. After her marriage she 
learned to control her social manifestations, and is 
now a very charming woman, with vivacious man- 
ners and versatile accomplishments. She petted me 
fondly as a child, and has always met me with kindness 
and frank liking as a woman. I have in my turn 
always felt for her a strong personal sympathy, and 
recognise in her the capacity for much good, which, as 
the years go by, is evidently developing in her life. 


She has never been subjected to any decided disci- 


32 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


pline, nor been forced to look at life beneath its 
surface by sorrow. 

My cousin Emily was two years younger than her 
sister. She had little beauty, but was of an unusually 
gentle disposition—her amiability often degenerated 
into weakness. She has retained her soft impres- 
sibility through many sorrowful experiences that in 
another would have roused antagonism or developed 
energy. She had great musical talent—her chief gift 
from nature. ‘Through this arose a certain degree of 
sympathy between her and myself, for, as you know, 
music has always been a passion with me, all the 
more powerful because, by a strange antagonism, I 
have always refused to study it technically, always 
reserved it as the one thing sacred from my analysing 
fingers. From my earliest childhood my suscepti- 
bility to musical impressions was remarked by all 
about me, and caused many prophetic assurances — 
of my future career as a musician, but my repug- 
nance to a near approach, to a practical acquaintance 
with its science, could never be overcome. It was 


yielded to at first as a childish whim, and is now one 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 33 


of my most confirmed idiosyncrasies. My cousin’s 
talent was really wonderful, yet by a contradiction 
quite as marked as that in my own case, she was 
herself hardly conscious of the effects she achieved, 
at any rate except as scientific victories over merely 
scientific difficulties—the soul of music, the intan- 
gible, thrilling element, was nothing to her as it was 
all to me. I have seen her leave her instrument 
with an unmoved calmness and an unheightened 
color, after pouring forth strains that had electrified 
all who heard her, and which had brought hot tears 
to my eyes and stopped the very beating of my pulse. 
This calm immobility was her general mood; she 
was nearly stagnant in her daily life; the motion of 
the stream, if motion there were, was almost invisible. 
No sentiment more violent than a sort of helpless 
anxiety at the excessive excitement of others ever 
ruffled the tenor of her life while with us. I do 
not remember to have ever seen her angry, depress- 
ed, or exhilarated. Her only weapon in argument 
was silence, her only defence against wrath a sweet 


but not always appropriate smile JI, on the contrary, 
x 


34 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


was fiery, impetuous, imperious; furious when roused, 
and ready to shed my heart’s blood in battle for a 
cause I loved. Circumstances afterwards changed 
my manifestations, and grafted on my original nature 
a habit of action and a restraint of expression utteriy 
at variance with my true self. Now that the pres- 
sure of those circumstances is lfted from my soul 
I am surprised to find how much of my original 
nature re-appears and asserts’ itself. 

My parents lost two children in infancy, and one 
of my first marked reminiscences is connected with 
death. When I was a wee little thing of some three 
years, my baby brother died, and the stillness of 
the house, the tears of my mother and father, the 
hush of the darkened room where the infant lay, 
as I thought asleep, affected me with a vague fear- 
fulness. The nurse took me by the hand and 
led me to the cradle—I started, for instead of my 
laughing, crowing, happy little brother, there was a 
cold, still image that would not open its eyes, and 
that chilled me when I put my hand upon the little 
cheek. The baby had been a source of wonder to 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 35 


me all its life; I thought it very odd that it could 
neither stand up nor speak, since it looked so wise 
with its large, black, mournful eyes, and was so very 
much bigger than my largest doll; but now that 
quiet form, with closed eyes and moveless hands, was 
a still greater mystery—one which long haunted my 
childish imagination and suggested a thousand unan- 
swered questions. For years that chamber had the 
solemnity of death for me,—I did not understand the 
nature of my own feelings in regard to it, but in my 
wildest moods I never dared speak loudly there, and 
always trod softly and reverently over its floor. After 
this sorrow in my home, which was an incident of 
far more import to me than those about me supposed 
—for there is, after all, a wonderful degree of reserve 
in the childish heart in regard to its deepest feelings 
—there followed a long season of mingled shade and 
sunshine in my own individual life, and of peaceful 
ease and prosperity for the rest of the household. 
My sunshine came from what would be called a 
happy childhood, and reigned supreme when the 


childish, thoughtless element was uppermost; the 


36 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


shade prevailed when the graver portion of my nature 
awoke, fillmg my imagination with dreams, and 
bringing shadows from the untried future to imbue 
my heart with a vague, nameless woe. As I look 
back upon this period in my life, I can trace the 
birth and growth of nearly all the passions and 
opinions that have since predominated over my 
whole being. 

But my lamp grows dim, silence and loneliness 
dwell throughout the house, it is long past midnight, 
I alone am a watcher,—so farewell for awhile; may 
the Everlasting Father bless and keep you with his 
peace till we meet again. He alone knows how much 
of my heart is with you, how all my hopes and all 
my fears, my joys and anxieties, are now bound up in 
your most beloved self ;—once more farewell. 


ETHEL SUTHERLAND. 


LETTER SECOND. 


I WRITE to you from the gloomy solitude of my own 
room, amid the wrathful sounds of sea and sky. A 
terrific storm is raging about me; the rain pours in 
torrents from a leaden sky ; the roaring of the angry 
sea sounds hoarsely from the distant shore, and the 
winds howl like a pack of devils at my windows, 
clamorous to be let in, shaking and rattling my closed 
sashes as if to break through in spite of me. I mock. 
at their vain attempts, secure from their attack, and 
with baffled rage they turn and rush among the trees, 
flinging the branches hither and thither in wild fury 
—the old elms quiver like reeds before the strong 
hands of the Spirits of the Storm who march forth to- 
day triumphant. Itisaday for dark deeds. I would 
choose such a one had I a crime to accomplish. The 


air breathes despair through all things—something 


38 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


beyond depression, beyond discouragement—full of 
settled energy, of despairing recklessness, of longing 
for action ;—it would supply to a vicious nature the 
very stimulus needed to bring evil deeds into strong 
and active life from the dark stillness of evil thoughts. 
You know how miserably atmospheric I am, how a 
long season of dull grey skies and drizzling rain and 
dense fog, so common in our climate, can sink me 
from one depth of depression to another, till all sun- 
shine is forgotten, all hope crushed, all earth darkened, 
and all heaven shut out. But that quiet hopelessness 
is more tolerable than the frenzy that assails me 
during these wild, furious tempests. Then I grow 
mad, tiger-like, memory becomes as a fiend calling up 
the irrevocable past, with all hideous spectres to appal 
my shrinking sight. Distorted and exaggerated, every 
fault and every folly comes forth to accuse me; I seem 
to myself as a poor criminal amid the ghosts of his sins 
allowed to torture him with the rehearsal of his 


crimes. Ah! then I need your strong and healthful 





and true nature near me ;—your smile only can chase 


away these phantoms, only in your love can I find 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 39 


rest and peace. Do you remember that day last 
autumn when you found me so utterly overwhelmed 
by these influences—when you wondered at finding 
so different a being from the one you had left so short 
a time before happy and hopeful? J shall not soon 
forget how you won me step by step from my depres- 
sion, and brought me, first the relief of tears, and then 
the returning serenity of peace. The gratitude I felt 
was unutterable,—I knew that this experience was an 
assurance for the future, a seal, as it were, set upon our 
love to stamp it -with a higher and hoher meaning, to 
raise it above the earthliness of passion, and give us 
promise of entire union in our whole natures. The 
glorious fulness of your sympathy, the entering of 
your spirit into the innermost depths of my conscious- 
ness, the wise tenderness of your treatment of the sick 
soul, and the calm power with which you restored 
the balance of my inner forces which had scorned my 
own attempts at control—all this was something very 
marvellous to me, something for which I had pined 
in vain in all my friendships. It was so unlike the 


forced utterances and the useless consolations which 


40 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


had always fallen with such a cold, dead weight upon 
me, when in such moods. From that moment I have 
trusted myself wholly unto you, I have gloried in the 
knowledge that your strength of soul is so far above 
mine, while your gentle tenderness can still sympa- 
thize in my weakness. Since that time I have felt 
nothing but repose in my love for you, and I offer 
you ever the most loyal trust, I bring you tribute of 
all that is most worthy in myself. 

It is singular in what different ways different per- 
sons are affected by these atmospheric. changes, which 
are such palpable realities to persons of my tempera- 
ment. ‘To some a beautiful day, when the beneficent 
sun shines lovingly into the heart, is suggestive of 
nothing grander than a boisterous pic-nic in the 
woods, with its accompaniments of cold chicken and 
warm flirtations. ‘The riotous winds of March are 
only rude enemies of their delicate complexions to 
most women: they hear nothing of the pouring forth 
of long pent-up glee among the trees, as the breeze 
comes shouting aloud to them of the returning Spring, 


and then flies off to carry, with wild mirth, the same 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 41 


glad tidings to the still frozen streams. ‘To some the 
violent storm suggests ideas of their own comforts 
within-doors, heightened by the contrast from without, 
causes a more complacent survey of the bright fire, 
the thick carpets, the heavy curtains closed to exclude 
the night air,—induees a lazier stretch into the luxu- 
rious depths of the comfortable arm-chair,—some- 
times the undefined impression that all these luxuries 
must, in some way, be the reward of their own 
merits, a conclusion adapted to render them still more 
valuable. But to me there comes a fierceness with 
the storm; the winds claim kindred with me as they 
hoarsely shout; magnetic influences sway me; I 
become, as it were, a portion of the storm, feeling its 
wild unrest, responding to its unearthly voices, obey- 
ing its weird suggestions; my sympathies, my heart, 
my very life, are mysteriously absorbed into it. 
Every rushing of the blast, every sobbing of the rain, 
echoes and vibrates through my inmost consciousness, 
as the harp-string quivers and gives forth its tones 
when tl:e breeze sweeps across it. 


The storm to-day has brought before me one 


42 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


remembrance of the past with peculiar force. I will 
endeavor to relate it to you as one more link in the 
history of my life. You see that, for one like me, a 
steady and continuous narrative of incidents is quite 
out of the question, nor would such a one, however 
minute in external details, help you to a full under- 
standing of myself. I must be fragmentary and irre- 
gular in my story, for my life has been episodical and 
violently contrasted. My inner struggles, my various 
psychological phases, my soul-lfe, are what you wish, 
for they are myself: the external frame-work with 
which they have been built up into visible existence 
is valuable chiefly as a means for arranging them in 
some degree of definiteness, and of displaying the 
connection they have with one another. Hxternal 
changes and external sounds and sights have often 
passed before me as a panorama, tame and spiritless 
compared to the turmoil and excitement which filled 
my inner world, that world to which so few have 
been admitted, but wherein those few have ever been 
welcomed as right royal guests. 


But to return to the remembrance suggested by the 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 43 


storm. You once asked me why I always shuddered 
and grew pale at the mention of Sidney Clarkson’s 
name. I did not tell you then, but promised that, at 
some future time, I would tell you a long story about 
him and myself} and you should cease to wonder at a re- 
pugnance I am wholly unable to conceal. You know 
him only as a plausible, agreeable, handsome man of 
the world, full of outward courtesy and grace, and ap- 
parently careless and thoughtless of all grave and deep 
matters. Yet [remember you once said, that you could 
hardly understand how such a man as Clarkson seemed 
to be, could have such an eagle eye and such sharp-cut, 
firmly-closed lips; and that there was something in his 
smile that made youshiver. The truth is, that Sidney 
Clarkson is not what he seems to the world to be: 
he is a deep, unscrupulous, daring man, utterly devoid 
of principle, who hides his real nature behind a con- 
ventional mask, only that he may pursue, unmolested 
and unsuspected, the dark and tortuous paths of his 
own plans. He won the hand of Hleanor Walsing- 
ham in spite of herself; he conquered her, and she 


quailed before him, fearing even while she seemed to 


44. Ethel’s Love-Life. 


love him; her feeling for him was not love—it was a 
fascination, a subduing. Their courtship was a trial 
of strength between them; he won the victory, and 
led her like a slave—the beautiful trophy for the 
crowd to gaze at. How it happened that he thought 
it worth his while to struggle so hard for a prize 
which, with his cold worldly views and boundless 
ambition, could have been of little worth to him, must, 
I suppose, be explained by his liking for the struggle 
itself, and by the impossibility of gaining any victory 
without first establishing a closer intimacy than could 
exist with so proud and haughty a woman as Hleanor, 
without an open suitorship, an acknowledged engage- 
ment. Natures like his seem often to be, in their 
turn, dominated over by an irresistible necessity—they . 
must give battle whenever they meet those possessing 
a certain degree of antagonism to themselves. ‘l'o him 
the meeting with Eleanor was a direct challenge, 
which he had no power to resist; the contest must be 
fought, the victory must be decided. ‘To a nobler 
mind than his the prize might have seemed a glorious 


one; but he was incapable of appreciating the great 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 45 


capabilities of her nature, and he passed like a blight- 
ing wind over her youth, and changed her fresh vigo- 
rous promise into dying helplessness. I used to won- 
der what had become of her overweening pride, her 
haughty coldness, her superb self-assertion, when I 
saw her bow down like a timid child before his cold, 
courteous requests. I did not then know the iron will 
which she saw beneath those few, well-chosen words. 

It was during a visit I made at their charming 
country residence about a year after their marriage, 
that I learned myself to know what Clarkson really 
was. It was the attainment of this knowledge, 
involving as it did a severe struggle between us, that 
caused the cessation of all intercourse. It was on just 
such a day as this that the crisis came, and the differ- 
ent stages of the battle are associated in my memory 
with the rising or the lulling of the storm, the howl- 
ing of the wind, or the hushed piteousness of the weary 
rain. He had frequently annoyed me by too personal 
an interest in my affairs, too keen a scenting into my 
modes and habits of life. He delighted in asking 


leading questions in regard to myself, boasted quietly 


| 46 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


of having wrung from Eleanor various particulars of 
my past life, which it was positively painful to me 
that he should know, and declared himself magneti 
cally able to read in my countenance the most subtle 
changes of my emotional nature. He was fond of 
planning conversational surprises, commencing with 
harmless topics and by abrupt transition reverting to 
something touching myself, looking sharply at me all 
the while, to note any change of countenance or any 
unguarded remark—determined to break down in 
some way what he termed my unaccountable reserve. 
Eleanor’s knowledge of me was itself imperfect, and, 
certain that his could be no greater, I thanked the 
constitutional reserve that had always prevented me 
from any but slight confidences and unimportant reve- 
lations of myself. What he knew had only awakened 
what I considered at first an idle curiosity particularly 
unbecoming an intellectual man. But his appetite 
for mental conflict was aroused, his enjoyment of 
struggling was at work, he knew enough of my indi- 
viduality to see that it was one even more difficult 


of conquest than that of his wife; his spirits rose and 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 47 


his strength developed at each repulse he received, 
and he was confident that by putting forth all his 
reserved power, he must, eventually, bear down my 
bravest opposition; so he was disposed to prolong the 
stratagems and the skirmishes preliminary to march- 
ing into possession of the conquered country. He 
skilfully attempted to win my willing confidence by 
delicate expression of his sympathy for what I had 
suffered, and for aught he knew was still suffering ; 
referred with tears in his eyes to his first meetings with 
me, declaring to my infinite astonishment that there 
had arisen from the first, a wonderful degree of sym- 
pathy between us, and, with suggestions so impalpa- 
ble that at times they seemed never to have been 
really uttered, hinted touching regrets that we had 
not met before the existence of ties on both sides 
necessitated a conclusion which he expressed only by a 
deep-drawn sigh. Bnt this Werterian aspect was too 
transient and too intangible for any action on my 
part, and while maintaining the existence of mutual 
affinity and his thorough understanding of my nature, 


he explained, with eloquent fervor, that his excess of 


48 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


reverence had always prevented him from entering 
into the inner sanctuary of my feelings, though know- 
ing that he held in his hand its master-key. When I 
laughed at his rhapsodies he grew angry and sarcastic ; 
when I was silent he became penitent and reverential 
again. At intervals he would lay aside all these per- 
sonalities and be for days what he knew so well how 
to be—the most agreeable of companions, the most 
courteous of hosts; would captivate all who were within 
his home-circle by the charm of his manner, the bril- 
liancy of his wit, and the variety of his accomplish- 
ments. So contrastive an organization I have never 
met in any one else, or one so completely under the 
control of its owner. His peculiarities extended into 
every aspect of life. Princely in his expenditure, 
magnificent in all his tastes, shrewd in acquisition 
though daring in speculation, and reckless of all 
established rules, he gloried in living upon the very 
crater of a volcano, and was exhilarated by the con- 
stant watchfulness and innumerable stratagems which 
his pecuniary affairs required. Even when the crash 


came he showed a fierce enjoyment of the new form 


ag 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 49 


which his excitement took, and held his poverty with 
the same iron grasp with which for a time he had 
held his wealth. 

On the day to which I refer, he had roused me 
beyond myself, by his ever-changing yet pertinacious 
attacks, and I was chafing with an inward rage which 
it required all my efforts to conceal. The hours 
passed on, the storm with its powerful influences was 
oppressing my very soul, and I longed for the solitude 
of my own room, yet knew that he would regard my 
retreat as an acknowledgment of cowardice, which I 
did not really feel; as dread of a battle which, as I 
was now sure it must come some time, might as well 
come then. So I kept my storm-susceptibilities as 
quiet as possible, and my manner as serene as usual, 
while I inwardly prepared my forces for desperate 
conflict. What result he looked for in case of my 
ultimate surrender I did not ask myself—I doubt if 
he exactly knew himself. He fought for the sake of 
the battle, and would wait for the inspiration of the 
victory to suggest the disposition of the spoils. I 


fought for my soul’s life, and with every energy I 
3 


50 | Ethel’s Love-Life. 


possessed, and yet through it all I never felt one pang 
of fear or one doubt of myself. I even enjoyed a 
sort of pleasurable excitement such as a spectator may 
feel in watching the movements of a champion on 
whom he feels an immutable reliance. I hardly 
knew what I was struggling against, yet with the 
unquestioning obedience I always offer to my instinc- 
tive perceptions, which warn me when I am in the 
presence of dark and bad natures, I buckled on my 
armor and kept my sword in my hand. My questions 
I put aside till, the battle over, I should be able to 
examine and answer them in fuller knowledge and 
more serene certainty. Our spirits rose as the warfare 
continued, till it was hand to hand and life for life. 
I kept guard over myself with all my power, my old 
discipline standing me in good stead; neither by taunt 
nor by entreaty, by question nor assumption of acqui- 
escence in his proposed conclusions, would I reveal 
one glimpse of my heart, either in its past or its pre- 
sent, or allow that I had ever perceived any affinity 
of nature, of intellect, or of heart, between him and 


myself. What had at first involved only my intrust- 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 51 


ing him with my personal confidence grew to include 
the revelation and surrender of my consciousness and 
free will. For hours the wordy conflict lasted ; I did 
not waver and he did not fall back. But he lost, to 
some extent, his power over himself, and as his excite- 
ment increased and his self-revelations became more 
decided, I grew, by very reaction, colder and calmer 
and better able to comprehend and fathom him. As 
he grew eloquent I grew impassive, as he lost self- 
command I grew serene, as passion made him weak 
just in proportion as it made him sincere, so all fear, 
all excitement died away within me, and I smiled to 
think how much I had really dreaded the encounter. 
Now I knew that there was no affinity between us; 
that the mere similarity of tastes, the outside likings 
of the intellect which by their resemblance had some- 
times troubled me, were not incompatible with an 
actual separation of the two natures, as wide, as deep 
as, in this moment, I was proud to assert it. He had 
not followed my change of mood as closely as I had 
his; absorbed in his own feelings he was no longer 


cool enough for observation, and his astonishment was 


52 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


excessive when, interrupting him in the middle of a 
most romantic, and under other circumstances, a really 
touching appeal, I rose, and standing before him, 
gazed so steadily at him that his eyes fell beneath 
mine, and, slowly, calmly, scornfully I defied him and 
his wrath. I told him what I saw in him of serpent- 
cunning and of vilest wickedness; that he moved my 
will no more than the idle prattle of a child could do; 
and that, though at first I bore with him, as only half- 
understanding his crooked nature, he now stood 
revealed to me as only worthy of my scorn. I must 
have spoken strongly and daringly, for the change in 
him was instantaneous, and he attempted no remon- 
strance. Only he rose from the low seat on which he 
had been sitting, and bending his face to mine, he 
looked into my eyes asif to read my very soul. How 
I bore that intense gaze I do not know, but a power 
within me seemed to give me strength, and I did not 
quail or move—till, sinking once more upon the little 
seat, he covered his face with both his hands, murmur- 
ing as he did so, “Always yourself! I might have 


known you could not be as others !” 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 53 


I turned away from him, and, without another 
word, left the room. He made no attempt to detain 
me, and I gained my own room unmolested. It was 
long past midnight, as the striking of the old hall 
clock told me as I went up the staircase. I remem- 
ber only that I found my chamber door open, and 
that I mechanically closed and bolted it. I must have 
fainted immediately after, for, before the early sum- 
mer morning broke, I found myself lying in the 
middle of the floor and suffering from such exhaustion 
that I could not at first recall any of the occurrences 
of the previous day, or comprehend how I came to be 
in such a condition. The shock to my nervous 
system had been so great, the tension of all my facul- 
ties so violent, that the reaction was fearful. I 
undressed myself, however, and went to bed and lay 
for a long while planning an immediate escape from 
the trying circumstances about me. It was impossible 
for me to risk seeing Mr. Clarkson again: yet I 
loved Eleanor too well to do anything which should 
cause her pain, and I had always reverenced the 


womanly reserve that had surrounded her every 


54. Ethel’s Love-Life. 


mention of her husband’s name, so that I did not 
know how little or how much she understood him, or 
how much trust she might feel in my own loyalty to 
herself. Her health, even then very delicate, obliged 
her to keep early hours, so that she had retired the 
evening previous some time before the conversation 
between Mr. Clarkson and myself had passed beyond 
the bounds of courteous argument; but I knew that 
she would, as usual, come to my room in the morn- 
ing and chat with me as, in my indolent way, I made 
my very gradual toilette. I soon heard her knock at 
my door, and her “‘Good morning, Ethel; are you up 
yet?” in which I could detect little change from her 
usual tone. I replied, through the closed door, that I 
was not very well, but would be down stairs soon 
after breakfast. She admitted the excuse, but added 
that her husband had left home at daybreak to visit a 
farm he owned some miles distant, and would be 
absent two days, Before those two days were past I 
had bidden farewell to poor Eleanor, who clung to me 
with most expressive fondness, and was on my way 


to my own home. It was long before I was able 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 55 


to recover my usual tone, and the complete exhaustion 
I experienced was proof that the struggle had been 
greater than I had imagined: the demand upon my 
strength more stringent than I had any idea of at the 
time. I have never been able to resist the paleness 
and the shudder which you noticed, when I am 
reminded of it, and I feel even now a sensation of 
exhaustion stealing over me at the memory. I have 
never referred to it, save in my own heart, and have 
kept the seal of secresy upon it all, even in my corre- 
spondence with Eleanor, which continued as friendly 
as ever for some time after my return. I never saw 
her or Mr. Clarkson again ; they quarrelled soon after, 
and her friends insisted upon a separation. His affairs 
were in hopeless disorder, and her little fortune was 
swallowed up in the general ruin, while his character 
suffered severely in the investigations which followed 
his bankruptcy. He wore the same cold and haughty 
mien through all, however, and, after a year of sepa- 
ration, he, by his strange magic, brought his wife 
once more to his feet.. Her naturally delicate frame 


had received terrible injury from the mental suffer 


56 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


ing she had endured, her proud spirit was broken by 
shame and misfortune, and she died very soon after 
her return to her husband. He has never crossed my 
path since, and the scenes which, in the passing, were 
so full of interest and action, have now faded into the 
past,—but they will never quite lose their painful 
power over me, or be for me an utterly dead remem- 
brance. Poor Eleanor! her love and trust in me 
were very precious to me; and by a loving message 
sent to me from her death-bed I knew that she had 
understood all, and that she held me high in honor 
through an experience on which her wifely dignity 
imposed silence between us. 


ETHEL. 


LETTER THIRD. 


I HAVE been ill, my beloved, ill in soul and body 
—I have needed you, and you were not nigh—but 
the thought of you has never left me. Your picture 
hangs by my bedside, and I have lain, hushed and 
still, gazing upon it, till the soul I knew so well 
has seemed to speak through those calm eyes, and 
I have held communion with you througk that mute 
image of yourself. And now I am able to read your 
letters, which mistaken friends kept- from me for 
awhile,—ah! they have done me more good in both 
my maladies, than all the draughts I swallowed, 
all the slumber I could grasp. JI am _ growing 
stronger every day, and my mind is recovering its 
tone; before you are able to reach me I shall be 
quite well, and we will spend the summer-time, 


which waits but for your coming to make it com- | 
2% 


58 Ethel’s. Love-Life. 


pletely beautiful, in delicious wanderings by the 
seashore and amid our grand old woods. I look 
with longing for you, my beloved; my heart is 
hungry and my spirit is athirst for you,—only in 
your presence am I entirely myself. The fulness 
and freedom with which the magnetic current flows 
through my veins when you are near me, is won- 
derful even to me, who am so subject to its influ- 
ences, so responsive to its changes. The subtle 
element is always at work within me; always 
demanding some outlet of expression, some posi- 
tive direction for its action. When poured forth 
too freely it produces an exhaustion so entire, a 
prostration so universal as to be fearful. Only once 
_or twice in my life have I thus lost command of 
myself, thus abandoned my individuality, and then 
it seemed as if recovery were impossible, as if the 
physical frame so shared the suffering of the spirit 
that its weary weakness could never more become 
strength and health. When pent up within myself 
too closely, and denied utterance, as it has been in 


several arid seasons in my life, this magnetic force 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 59 


accumulates and flows back upon myself, chafing and 
wearing at the very fountain of my life. Never has 
it found such harmonious and healthful outlet as 
through my love for you, never have I felt such deli- 
cious and invigorating movement through my inner 
life as when it mingles with your own equally strong 
but far better directed forces, 

I remember once talking with a very dear friend 
upon this very subject; a friend made such with a 
rapidity which the pressure of outward circumstances 
added to inward attraction, could alone explain. 
We were placed in circumstances of peculiar isola- 
tion, thrown into each other’s hearts for shelter from 
the weary conyentionalism of all around us, and our 
love grew, as it were, in a hot-house atmosphere with 
all the cold winds shut out. We lived within our 
own little love-dwelling, with none to even ask for 
entrance. In one of the many long and confidential 
conversations which we held together, after perfect 
freedom had been established between us, I said, 
“Do you believe that any person has power really 


to infuse his own vitality into another, really to 


60 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


supply fresh impulse to another’s exhaustion, and 
to feed and refresh with renewing force those who 
have ceased for a time to supply their own needs?” 
“How should I not believe it,” was the reply, 
‘when I have myself experienced it? Have not you 
‘infused vitality’ into me? When we first met, 


was not I in a state of deplorable and utter stagnation 





and depression—and have not you lifted and restored 
me to myself? Have you not poured the warm cur- 
rent of life into my cold, faint pulses, and made my 
blood throb full and strong again? The shadows 
that encompassed me are fled, and I stand in the 
clear sunlight. The chilling atmosphere of indiffer- 
ence is dispelled, and I revel in the more than tropic 
‘warmth of living love. How or why it is that you 
have done all this, or why, with your brave strong 
nature, you have stooped to love so poor and weak 
a thing as I am, I ask not—I care not—it is enough 
for me to acknowledge and to feel grateful for it. 
But I tremble to think that the time is coming when 
our parting must throw me into a sadder state than 


ever; sadder it must be, for I have known such joy 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 61 


and peace of late that the darkness must seem still 
deeper by force of contrast. Therefore do not leave 
me utterly, but in some way let me feel, from time to 
time, that you are not all lost tome. You will not 
need me, but I shall need you, oh, so much !” 

And so I am ever conscious of this strange, incom- 
prehensible spiritual influence within myself. Only 
rarely do I exercise it outwardly, only rarely do I 
give it position and new direction with my will. 
Usually -I satisfy its needs by letting it flow along 
through the old channels of my established friend- 
ships; but when, as in the case I have just told you 
of, I meet with such a temptation to do good, I rejoice 
to give of my abundance to one who is perishing 
from want. There is need, of course, of some stimu- 
lus through the affections; I feel attracted by the 
individual or my will remains dormant ;—I know 
not even that I could give of my own vitality unto 
one I did not love, or if it could be received into a 
nature antagonistic to my own. But when there 
exists a sympathy between the emotional natures, my 


will can send a living flood through the heart, and I 


62 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


thrill with an answering joy and rise to a higher 
delight as I see the renewing of the life of my friend. 
In this instance the process was peculiarly apparent 
and full of interest tome. The physical sympathies 
were very ready in the organism of my friend, my 
own sensational powers were at that time in full 
strength, and the attraction which drew our spiritual 
natures together was followed by a mingling of some 
of my superfluous inner energies with her prostrate 
and enervated susceptibilities. 

It is quite extraordinary how great a difference 
there is, not only in the proportion of active, outgoing, 
magnetic power in different individuals, but also in 
the simply receptive element. Some who can give 
seem absolutely incapable of receiving—the most 
delicate and subtle returning fluid fails to win entrance 
at the door which opens but for egress to those within. 
Those persons strike us as hard and cold of nature, 
and even in subduing others, they chill and mortify 
the grateful and generous impulses which would come 
forth to meet and pay them homage. Others seem to 


have so large a capacity of reception and are so open 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 62 


e) 


to all floating magnetic forces, that it is matter of 
continual wonder that the accumulation does not of 
itself become active and pour forth of its abundance 
upon the other lives which stand about it in bitter 
need. But the two powers in persons of each class 
remain always distinct; the first cannot receive, the 
second cannot give; the want of wholeness of nature, 
of harmony of development, from time to time 
reveals itself, and disappoints those who had hoped for 
higher and grander manifestation. There are, how- 
ever, exceptional natures capable of both giving 
largely and receiving fully, in which the flux and 
reflux of the magnetic element is as the mighty tide 
of ocean, not like the tributary flowing of the 
river, bound on its unreturning errand to the sea. 
These natures move grandly on through their own 
orbits, rejoicing in their own fulness and planetary 
serenity of steady force, and render a large obedience 


to the great laws which regulate the universe 





an 
obedience as full of grandeur and of power as their 
own sovereignty over lesser things is complete. These 


spherical natures are very rare, and have almost 


64 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


infinite influence over the inferior ones brought in 
contact with them; and it is fortunate that their very 
greatness necessitates a loyal and noble truthfulness 
to great principles, and that they would scorn to use 
their strength for any but the noblest and most ele- 
vated objects. I do not hesitate to write to you, 
beloved Ernest, all my thoughts about this magnetic 
element, so little understood, so little even guessed at 
by careless natures. ‘Tio me it seems one of the 
grandest and most effective of all psychological forces, 
the master-key of our human nature, the manifesta- 
tion of our sympathy with the divine mind, the 
power by which all spiritual attainment both for the 
individual and for the mass is to be harmoniously and 
profitably directed and carried on. In its grandest 
development it is the propelling power of the universe, 
in its lesser expression it warms the heart and modi- 
fies the life. It is great enough for the first, and it 
does not disdain to render beautiful the last. Its 
diversity and inequality make its social movement; its 
possessors are lords and peers among men, and none 


are degraded by paying them reverence, for their 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 65 


dignity comes from no accidental circumstance, but is 
of divine ordaining. . Its possession brings a responsi- 
bility quite commensurate with its value, and weighs 
down to sadness even the strongest and most hopeful. 
I know that you regard it as I do; that you share as 
largely as myself, in the possession of this wonderful 
intangibility ; and that although we rejoice in our gift, 
yet we can never lightly use it and never dare to dese- 
crate it. Neither can we sit down contented with our- 
selves and leave it in inaction. ‘Those who possess it, 
and in whom it moves, as the Spirit of God once moved 
over the face of the waters, are ever looking earnestly 
for the light, and striving to create order out of the 
chaos about them. 

Susceptibility of this kind is almost always accom- 
panied by a high degree of susceptibility through the 
imaginative and even through the sensational nature. 
All impressions are readily received, whether they 
come in the tangible form of daily variety, or in the 
subtle and invisible essence of mental phenomena. 
In delicate physical organizations this vibration of 


impressions becomes more visible than in stronger 


66 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


and more robust natures. In me it is constantly per- 
ceptible, at least to myself. It is an ever present 
influence, which throbs within me as the waves of 
the ocean surge and swell; it continues even during 
my sleep. The character of my slumber is as that of 
my waking hours to those who know me beneath my 
external seeming, and see the movement under the 
apparent stillness. My repose is physically quiet, to 
a remarkable degree ; not a finger moves, not a breath 
is quickened, as I have been told by those who have 
watched my sleep till they have wakened me, out of 
very fear that it was sleep no longer. But in my 
heart and brain a storm may even then be raging, or 
a delirium of enjoyment swaying me hither and 
thither. I hear the muttering of thunder and the 
hoarse murmur of the threatening winds, or I melt 
in deepest ecstasy over Elysian fancies, and glow 
beneath the fiery excitement of my dream-creations. 
It was but yester-night that I was visited by fair 
and beautiful and joy-giving dreams. Whether they 
arose from your loving letter, which lay near my 


heart, and were obeying the impulses which distort 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 67 


conclusions a great way from their legitimate premises, 
as often happens in dream phenomena, I do not know. 
But with such a garb of glory did they invest the 
night, that I mourned when the rude touch of morn- 
ing rent in pieces the delicate rainbow-tinted fabric. 
Past my rapt senses swept a train of visionary joys; 
through the charmed atmosphere swelled the AXolian 
dream-music, and through my tranced soul thrilled 
passions and emotions and sensations, glowing, tre- 
mulous, intense, as the most subtle inspiration of 
Hasheesh. I caught such glimpses of the olden days 
as they lay far away in the faint dawnings of the 
Eastern sky—such scintillations of the future, as it 
gleamed in the golden glory of the Western clouds, 
that the brazen hardness of the garish noon-tide, which 
is really above my head, and beneath which I pant so 
wearily, passed into happy forgetfulness, 

Sometimes these dreams were vague but delicious, 
unreasoning and without order or regularity. At 
other times they took tangible forms, and I lived 
through them a life-like experience; my _ heart 


throbbed quick and strong, as in seasons of actual and 


68 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


concentrated emotion. You will smile, when I retrace 
the most vivid of these, to see what form its presiding 
spirit chose to take. I seem to find in the circum- 
stance one more confirmation of the theory, which, 
though I shrink from it, I cannot but believe in—that 
however free we may be in forming and beginning 
our heart-ties, and creating our friendships, our free- 
dom cannot extend to their destruction after they 
have really obtained an existence. We may make 
the image if we will, but, if it prove hideous, we 
cannot rid ourselves of it when we weary of it or dis- 
cover its enormity—it clings to us as the monster to 
Frankenstein, and appears from time to time to prove 
to us that it is ours. So, if a friendship is once 
formed, once incorporated into our being, we can 
never utterly destroy it, nor be as if it had never been. 
The subtle life-spirit, once evoked, will not die; its 
influence will not entirely fade away. ‘This restraint 
upon our volition, I remember, you once indignantly 
denied, but afterwards acknowledged with a sigh. 
Well, my dream seems a confirmation of this matter, 


—an assertion that, when the conscious and directing 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 69 


powers are in abeyance, when spontaneous and unre- 
strained impulses are at work within, the images and 
the heart-realities we thought laid asleep for ever can 
rise up in their old strength and declare to us their 
continued dominion. This dream will long linger in 
my memory: I was, as I thought, lying on my 
couch in a delicious reverie; summer perfumes were 
about me; the breath of roses entered at the open 
window; the hum of bees made the air musical, and 
their soft droning sound wove itself into my musings 
with a sweet and soothing power. As I lay thus in. 
a trance of quiet bliss, the door opened quickly, and 
Leonora entered, with that peculiar rushing step, 
which, with her, is always an indication of intense 
excitement, and produces such effect from its con- 
trast with her usual quiet movements and almost pas- 
sionless manner—that manner with which she strives 
to hide that stormy, fiery, tempestuous nature of hers. 
Turning her eyes upon me with all that intense 
expression of passionate love with which she used to 
greet me after an absence from me, and which I never 


saw in any mortal eyes but hers, set forth with such 


70 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


glowing, almost painful, intensity, she threw herself 
upon my neck, and clasping me with the fierce fond- 
ness of a lioness to her heart, till I felt its throbbings 
against my own, she bent over me with that longing, 
burning look, as if toread my very soul. Inamoment, 
however, that look changed to one of dewy softness 
and timid supplication, and sinking on her knees, 
with her arms still around my neck, she smothered me 
with hot kisses, and murmured in my ear, “Is it not 
all forgotten, my beloved Ethel? say it is all forgot- 
ten!” And as those sweet tones of entreaty fell upon 
the air, a magic spell came over all things, and it was 
all forgotten, and I pressed her once more to my 
heart and soothed her with words of endearment, till 
I hushed those tremulous beatings into stillness, and 
she rested in my arms as a little child. And, as we 
lay there side by side for uncounted hours, as it 
seemed, the charm of the old days came back upon 
us; the thrill of old loving returned; we felt that 
there was no longer any need of asking or of giving 
pardon for the old offences, but that they might pass 


into a deep, unbroken slumber. And then ensued 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 71 


such passionate outpourings of her long pent-up love, 
such eloquent prayers from her sweet lips, such 
tears from her wonderful eyes, that all the past rose 
up in new strength, and I knew that a strange and 
irrevocable tie still bound us two together, and we 
could never really part. 

I gave myself up with delirious joy to this impres 
sion; for a time I lived but for her and her love, and 
grew proud and happy as I saw the light in her 
- eyes become once more the soft, sweet trustfulness oF 
the old time. She seemed to resign herself once more 
utterly to me, to have no consciousness but mine, to 
live through my life, and even while leaving off all 
her own strong individuality, to thrill me with a sense 
of renewed and increased vitality, to throw her own 
rapid pulses into the calmer current of my veins, and 
make me, in spite of myself, share in her own super- 
abundant passion. And when, at last, I woke and 
found myself alone, I could not believe that the 
cloud which is between us was not dispelled, the 
coldness was not gone, the wrongs were not lying 


in slumber, and our hearts were not beating in 


72 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


unison. A sensation of sickness came over my 
heart, an irrepressible longing weighed me down; I 
yearned, for a moment, with an overpowering desire 
for one more hour with her I had loved so well. 
But I looked up at your picture, my beloved Ernest, 
and in that one instant I regained my calmness,— 
I was once more myself, and dream-fancies fled away 
before the magical influence of your serene gaze. 
I bless the artist every day of my life for the faithful- 
ness with which he has portrayed your worshipped 
image. There is in the picture the same marvellous 
strength and calm earnestness, which is so predo- 
minant in yourself—how should I live without it 
when you are far from me? The image of Leonora 
faded away, her strange fascination was at an end, 
her moral image seemed to emerge from her bewil- 
deringly beautiful physical one, and to stand forth 
for my condemnation as a traitorous and unworthy 
nature. But was it not strange she should come to 
resume her influence over me and acknowledge the 
supremacy of mine over her, in moments when all 


voluntary disguises are laid aside and the heart seems 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 73 


able to assert itself without restraint or direction 
from the will? Does it not prove that I am right 
when I say that spite of the coldness which I myself 
have maintained in my relations with her, spite of 
the contempt I feel for her, and which she knows 
I feel, spite of absence, of silence, of estrangement, 
we are, after all, not utterly separated? Strange, 
wayward, beautiful serpent that she was, that same 
invisible bond united us on the higher ground on 
which she walked erect so long, that it seemed she 
could never fall. The faithful reproduction of so 
many of the old elements of our connexion, made 
my dream most vivid; and the peculiarity which 
these dreams of mine often possess of allowing a 
sort of double consciousness in myself, through 
which I am able to pause and examine, as it were, 
each subtle change in emotion, quite impossible 
when waking hours are swayed by any strong im- 
pulse, imparts a strange power to these dream-epi- 
sodes. They seem, in the retrospect, quite as real as 
any true and actual experience of the past—they 


exhilarate or they depress, excite or subdue my whole 
4 


74 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


spirit. My dreams of you are always thus vivid; 
they are so free from any distorted exaggerations, 
you come to me with words and looks so like your 
own, that I sometimes think that absence is cheated 
of half its sadness, and that you really do visit me on 
. the wings of the night-wind. It would gladden your 
very heart within you, sometimes, and bring your 
most loving smile to your lips, to be really present 
at one of these intangible interviews. I will not 
tell you all their sweetness till you come yourself 
to fill out the grand proportions of this ideal being 
who comes through barred windows and bolted 
doors, in spite of storm and darkness, and heedless 
of distance and time and space, to cheer the heart 
which the long day has made dreary and desolate. 
Come still unto my dreams, true heart!—the inmost 
recesses of my own stand open with a weleome— 
no door is closed, no corner hidden from ycur eyes. 
I am all yours, and sleeping or waking I ain ever 
ready for the entrance of my king. 
ETHEL. 


LETTER FOURTH. 


HITHER my last letter to you, dear Ernest, or the 
dream which I related to you in it, has brought up 
the remembrance of Leonora to my mind so forcibly, 
that I have not been able to banish her from my 
waking or my sleeping thoughts, without going over 
step by step and memory by memory, that portion of 
my past which is so closely connected with her. I 
always find this the best way to get rid of fancies 
which haunt and annoy me—allow them full sway 
for awhile, let them carry me whither they will, and 
as long as they will, by their own impulse,—neither 
hurry nor retard them in their progress, and after a 
time, their force is spent and the whole matter sub- 
sides into its true place. The evil spirit is exorcised, 
and I am at peace without the wearisome struggle by 


which alone I could have combated and conquered 


76 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


them. I have, therefore, been dwelling much upon 
the past since I last wrote you, have been recalling the 
incidents in which Leonora bore so prominent a part, 
living over again the vehement emotions which then 
tore my heart; and in connexion with this, have 
once more indulged the habit of analysis so natural 
to me, and against which you so lovingly caution me. 
It is my first transgression, dearest, and I believe that, 
in this instance, you would sanction my course as the 
one best adapted to restore to me a degree of content- 
ment and acquiescence in the circumstances which 
took her from me. I am steadfast in my nature, as 
you know, and strong attachments once rooted in my 
heart are not readily eradicated; and it is only 
through repeated proof of the poisonous nature of the 
plant I have cherished, that I find power to tear it 
out from my life. 

The more I think of Leonora, the more extra- 
ordinary contradiction does she appear to me; the 
more do I wonder how I had strength to carry me 
through the struggle that ended in my putting her 


from me forever. You must not think from this that 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 77 


I regret the course I felt obliged to follow, or that 
I would swerve from it, were it to be done again 
—but, oh, Ernest, I do wish that it had never been 
necessary, or that at least I might have broken the 
bond more tenderly—for I know she loved me in 
spite of all; and even in what she did, those strange, 
contradictory attributes of hers enabled her to sepa- 
rate the friend whom she was loving from the woman 
whom she was injuring. Her duplicity seems to me 
an unfortunate gift of nature, by which she was com- 
pelled to live a dual life, and in each aspect of it to 
be acting a lie. Her whole existence was vibratory ; 
she swung hither and thither almost at random, tra- 
versing all extremes of loving sweetness and pathetic 
tenderness, as well as of revengeful bitterness and 
stormy passion. Her intercourse with me was one 
unbroken manifestation of the better and more beau- 
tiful part of her nature, and I had seen so many glori- 
ous capabilities that I felt within myself a tender 
sorrow at her sin rather than an anger at being the 
one injured by it. 


Yet we both know, Ernest, do we not? that any- 


78 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


thing less than the stern words spoken, the entire- 
ness and severity of my condemnation of her, would 
have been worse than useless). How I did it all 
is now a mystery to me, and my brain reels to think 
of it. She had been so much to me, and had so 
carefully guarded, as she thought, against all possi- 
bility of my discovering aught in her save the loving, 
sunny side of her nature which she turned towards 
me, that I sometimes think she might have learned 
to really love and feel the purity and truthfulness she 
was striving to make me see in her, and that her 
words were true when she said, ‘I am better when 
with you, Kthel, than I am at any other time, there- 
fore keep me with you, and do not leave me to my- 
self.” But when I grieve myself with thinking that 
I may have thrown away the only opportunity for 
raising and ennobling her, and charge myself with 
selfish disregard of her better aspirations, the recol- 
lection of what I know of her in other relations of 
her life, proves to me that her apparently noble 
moments were but episodes in a life full of dark and 


degrading impulse and unworthy action. It needed 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 79 


no other proof of her extraordinary mental power and 
strong discipline than to see, as I did, how she could 
keep out of sight during our long seasons of intimate 
intercourse, every one of those, at other apparently 
uncontrollable evil impulses of hers, which broke out 
in such savage and peculiar directions. The serpent 
slept while the flowers blossomed about him, and the 
gleaming of his glossy skin seemed only the sunshine 
lying on their fresh sweet leaves. 

It pleased her so much to think I only knew her in 
her relations to myself, only in the present that existed 
for us both, and which was, from a combination of pecu- 
liar circumstances, entirely disjoined from her own 
actual past—that I had not the heart to tell her how 
thoroughly her antecedents were known to me, how 
vividly the picture of her whole past had been painted 
for me by that quaint colorist and far-seeing Everard 
Stanley. He used to delight himself and annoy me with 
revelations of every possible kind in regard to Leonora, 
and urged his sister to say what he dared not utter; and 
though I could not but regret that there was so much 
for them to tell, I kept their secret to the last, and she 


So Ethel’s Love-Life. 


has never known how I became possessed of her his- 
tory, as I felt. it my duty, when we separated, to let 
her know that I was. I knew that Everard and 
Alice were true as truth itself; I knew that he regret- 
ted nearly as much as I the crooked falseness of Leo- 
nora, even while my apparent incredulity tempted 
him into more and more graphic details, and piqued 
him to a greater accumulation of facts; but I clung 
to a secret hope that the present might be a turning- 
point in Leonora’s life, and I wished her to know that 
I would stand her friend, in spite of her past, if she 
would but remain loyal to me, against whom she had 
then never sinned, not so much for the effect it might 
have upon myself, as because an unswerving loyalty 
to me would imply a promise of and a longing for 
something higher and truer in her whole future. I 
did not feel myself to be compromised in this, for I 
felt that my complete knowledge was itself a sufficient 
protection, and I ever held certain portions of myself 
aloof from her touch, keeping sacred much of my 
dearest and most interior soul-life.. It was chiefly in 


my intellectual nature that she came closest tome; and 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 81 


although there were, as I have-said, certain other 
strong affinities between us, making daily intercourse 
full of charm—yet I should never have depended 
entirely upon her or felt willing to lift for her the cur- 
tain of my innermost reserves. I had no need of her, 
however, in this way ; I was already rich in true friends, 
and my nature does not require to pour itself forth in 
unreserved expression to each new claimant of my 
heart's hospitality. The deepest love of my heart, the 
richest gift of my soul, the offering of my past sorrow 
and the trembling hope of coming peace, had been 
laid at your feet, and I could crown but one king 
within my heart—to him and to him alone, could I 
reveal myself completely—yet though I wish not to 
worship but one, I could have loved her and enjoyed 
much with her on a different level.| I would not and 
could not have made of her a planet in my heaven, on 
which to depend for the regulation of my inner forces, 
nor yet have placed her among those few fixed stars 
from whose clearness and calmness I learn lessons of 
spiritual serenity—but she might at least have been 


something better than a meteor shooting with brilliant 
4% 


82 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


flash across my sky, to fall at last a dark and useless 
heap of stones. \ 

The study and analysis of such an organism as hers 
are full of interest to one who possesses the key to its 
contradictions. The inconsistencies of women are 
generally more subtle than those of men, and affect 
their actions with a more delicate and intangible 
power. Women often love each other with as much 
fervor and excitement as they do men. When this 
is the case, there is generally rare beauty both in the 
feeling and in its manifestations, great generosity in 
its intuitions, and the mutual intercourse is marked 
by charming undulations of feeling and expression. 
The emotions awakened heave and swell through the 
whole being as the tides swell the ocean. Freed from 
all the grosser elements of passion, as it exists between 
the sexes, it retains its energy, its abandonment, its 
flush, its eagerness, its palpitation, and its rapture— 
but all so refined, so glorified, and made delicious and 
continuous by an ever-recurring giving and receiving 
from each to each. -The electricity of the one flashes 


and gleams through the other, to be returned not only 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 83 


in degree as between man and woman, but in kind as 
between precisely similar organizations. And these 
passions are of much more frequent occurrence than 
the world is aware of—generally they are unknown 
to all but the parties concerned, and are jealously 
guarded by them from intrusive comment. ‘There 
is a gloom in deep love as in deep water,” and silence 
and mystery help to guard the sacred spot where we 
go to meet our best-beloved friends. The world sees 
only the ordinary appearances of an _ intimate 
acquaintanceship, and satisfies itself with a few com- 
mon-place comments thereon—but the joy and beauty 
of the tie remain in sweet concealment—silent and 
inexpressive when careless eyes are upon it, but leap- 
ing into the sunlight when free from cold and repel- 
ling influences. 

I have had my passionate attachments among 
women, which swept like whirlwinds over me, some- 
times scorching me with a furnace-blast, but generally 
only changing and renewing the atmosphere of my 
life. I have loved so intensely that the daily and 


nightly communion I have held with my beloved ones 


84 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


has not sufficed to slake my thirst for them, nor the 
lavishness of their love for me been able to satisfy the 
demands of my exacting nature. I would “have 
drunk their soul as ’twere a ray from heaven”—hayve 
lost myself and lived in them—and this too in spite 
of that trait of non-absorption which you so often tell 
me I possess. I absorb others, yet am never absorbed 
by them; but I have longed to be so, have yearned to 
leave off for a little while this burden of individuality 
which cuts into the very soul of me as sackcloth 
grates upon the shrinking flesh. Oh, how I have at 
times wished to lie down and fall asleep in another’s 
consciousness, and give my panting, quivering vitality 
a little rest. There have been seasons when this 
unattainable desire to leave off my own separate exist- 

ence with its too intense experience, and merge my ) 
own heart-life in the less fluctuating and less extensive 
alternations of another, has exhausted every energy 
of my soul, and made my inner self rise up before me 
in gigantic and frightful proportions, seeming like 
some fearful phantom ever walking by my side and 


holding me bound fast in strong but invisible bonds. 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 85 


I loved Claudia thus—loved?—nay, I worshipped 
her, I poured out at her feet all the wealth of my 
young girlish heart; and what a glorious life I led 
with her strong high soul, which took me into such 
lofty companionship—so far above me as she was— 
and yet the greatness of my love lifted me to her. 
My soul sought and found im her every emotion 
which passed over it, and my confidence flowed forth 
in one unswerving, unfaltering trust to her. The 
proof of the grandeur and truth of this love of mine 
was not only in the length of time it continued, but 
still more in the fact that it grew up side by side with 
another grand passion which devastated my nature, 
and destroyed for a while in me the very fountain of 
my inner life. Had not Claudia been the truest and 
most loving of friends, my heart would have withered 
and died out in the struggles of that time. 

Leonora could never have been to me what Claudia 
has been—the serene loftiness, the entire truthfulness, 
the unselfish devotion, which made Claudia so perfect 
in all the relations of friendship, were all wanting in 


Leonora. But there was a great deal in the feminine 


86 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


beauty, the bewitching grace, the delightful piquancy, 
and the brilliant intellect of Leonora to fascinate and 
to subdue. She disarmed judgment by her charming 
ways, she overpowered coldness by her magnetic 
attraction. Our intercourse was delightful—there was 
no repose in it, but the action was of that delicious, 
self-sustaining sort that never wearied or exhausted 
either. When I think of the hours we have spent 
together, a smile, as at the recollection of an intense 
pleasure, rises to my lips. She acted as a continual 
spur to my intellectual activity, and was always ready 
to join me in the race after an intellectual prize. The 
demands she made upon me, she made also upon her- 
self; and the amount of brain-work which she exacted 
from herself to remedy the insufficiency of her early 
education, was really astonishing. You knew her 
only as a handsome coquette, a somewhat daring 
inquirer into men and things, a not over-scrupulous 
searcher after experience; you could never see her as 
I have seen her, when all the higher and better parts 
of her contradictory nature were in full force. You 


never saw the gay and vain ball-room belle of the 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 87 


evening transformed into the serious student of the 
morning; or heard the lips that seemed formed for 
repartee and gay nonsense grow eloquent upon great 
themes. If her heart had been as true as her mind 
was comprehensive, she would have been a rarely- 
gifted woman, but her flight into the heavens was 
impeded by sordid chains and mean obstacles. She 
had not even truth enough to be really sincere in 
deploring her own deficiencies, or to make any hearty 
efforts towards a higher plane. Her aspirations were 
strong, and lifted her at times to an apparent height; 
but they were not true, and did not really raise her 
above herself, and after the momentary effort was 
over, she returned to her earthliness and was contented 
in that as before. Hach mood was an episode, each 
impulse valuable to her as supplying new sensations, 
and all in turn lost their value and their meaning 
when they lost their freshness and ceased to bring her» 
exciting experiences. She seemed not under her own 
control in these matters, and in spite of her unusually 
powerful will, which bent to her purposes nearly all 


those with whom she came in contact, she was often 


88 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


swayed herself by influences to which she scorned to 
acknowledge her susceptibility. To be sure, these 
influences seemed always to have their birth within 
herself, they rose as vapors from the soil, and she was 
marble to all external forces, impenetrable to persuia- 
sion, untouched by entreaty, unmoved even by open 
scorn in her daily intercourse with others. It was 
something to be proud of, after all, to be able to bend 
her iron will to my own, to force my own volition 
through her thoughts and acts as I have often done. 
And the proud humility with which she could submit, 
the loving glance with which she gave her obedience, 
were full of an indescribable charm to one with a tem- 
perament like my own, full of its own strong contrasts 
and antagonisms. 

You know all the circumstances which revealed her 
whole nature to me and brought our intimate commu- 
nion to a sudden stop. I rejoice that you were near 
me to sanction all my words, to sustain me through 
the pain I suffered at first, and to encourage me in 
the despondency which followed. You forgave my 


many evidences of weakness, had patience with my 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 89 


complaints over my loss, and soothed the regrets I 
could not help but feel. It was my first quarrel—it 
was the first time I had been called upon to express 
contempt for any one for whom I had felt love—pray 
Heaven it be the last !—and but that indignation sup- 
plied the necessary impetus to my expression, I might 
have kept silence. I have sometimes, on minor mat- 
ters, had seasons of quite refreshing indignation, but 
they have almost always been in behalf of others or 
for matters not really interwoven with my own con- 
sciousness. ‘l'o those who have crossed my orbit at 
those rare intervals when Mars has been in the 
ascendant, I have sometimes spoken or written harsh 
things with a momentary enjoyment. When I speak 
them, it is always in a low voice and with apparent 
calmness, the result, I suppose, of the concentration of 
my emotions upon a given point; when I write them 
I always write boldly, freely and rapidly, dash on the 
ink and spread open my pen that the venom may flow 
forth with the black fluid. My page assumes a hard- 
ness and sharpness of outline in consonance with my 


feelings, and it affects the motion of my hand to such 


go Ethel’s Love-Life. 


a degree, that I cannot immediately divest myself of 
it, but continue for days to write in a large, bold hand. 
The very contrast which this affords to my usually 
unexpressional nature supples a kind of fiery enjoy- 
ment for the moment. There is a charm in honest 
anger, a pleasure in its outburst, when there is no 
motive for its concealment. Such seasons of tempest 
are very exhausting to me, however, and itis well that 
they come but seldom. Anger is not a common feel- 
ing with me, and when it comes, it implies a long, or 
at least an intense previous experience. I am so 
generally indifferent to those matters which rouse 
anger in others, that I often seem amiably self-pos- 
sessed when I am merely unconscious. But the 
effect of this is an accumulation within of a concen- 
trated power of expression when the real occasion 
comes. When I am roused I rush fiercely and 
warmly into the conflict, I feel completely awake, my 
brain grows active, my words come fluently and with 
more point and pithiness than at other times, I fancy 
my perceptions are keener, my mental faculties are all 
on the alert, I like the conflict while it is fresh .and 


Ethel’s Love-Life. gl 


new, and until I am tired of wz, I can do battle with 
vigor and effect. But almost always I get weary of 
the whole matter, and am the first to smile at my 
vehemence—very, very rarély have I felt long-con- 
tinued anger—only once or twice in my whole life 
has positive passion pervaded me with its white heat 
of power. Then it has burned even my own nature, 
after scorching those on whom its first blaze lighted, 
and eaten into my own energies like a subtle poison 
which destroys even while it exhilarates. 

Leonora has passed out of my daily and active life 
—TI shut her out also from my heart, yet she does and 
she will meet me sometimes in my inner conscious- 
ness, when I abandon myself to reverie, or when night 
brings me dreams. I shall probably never see her 
face again, I would not if I could; if we meet it will 
be as strangers, and yet the niche in my heart and life 
which she filled remains unoccupied; and I know, 
though my name may never cross her lips, that I 
visit her in the night hours as she visits me—that a 
wailing cry for the love she has lost sometimes escapes 


her—that there is an invisible bond which still unites 


g2 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


each to the other. If repentance and regret could 
have availed aught in such a case, there was no lack 
of either on her part, [am sure. Our subtle essences 
mingled and assimilated too thoroughly ever to be 
entirely disunited. I do not miss her in my daily 
walk in the world, for in the world we were little 
associated together; but in my dreamy hours, or in 
my intellectual labor, I turn involuntarily for her 
assistance, her sympathy, her quick appreciation. I 
would like at some time to discuss more at length with 
you this peculiar relationship of one individuality to 
another, with its apparent indestructibility, and in con- 
nexion with it to know what you think of the influ- 
ence of character upon affection, as it shows itself in 
our likes and dislikes, and enters or remains on the 
outside of our deepest heart-experiences. It is a sub- 
ject full of contradictions, and, as it seems to me, 
involving many spiritual phenomena and concealing 
great spiritnal truths. 

And now, dear Ernest, that I have exorcised this 
haunting demon Leonora, have laid her to sleep again, 


we will turn from her and the traitorous air she 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 93 


breathes to our own warm and pure atmosphere of 
life and love and truth. How the remembrance of 
those sunny summer days we spent together comes 
over me now with life-giving beauty! And how 
those pictures of the woods and streams by which we 
wandered, come up in this dark, sad, winter-time,— 
when I am doubly widowed of you and of beautiful 
Nature—to gladden and encourage me. Your letters 
are like the summer flowers to me, your love is as the 
great ocean by which we sat so often and whispered 
our whole souls unto each other. Summer is coming 
again, my Ernest, and with her comes my summer’s 
crown of life and light—yourself. Oh, how my heart 
expands beneath the blue and open sky, how it fills 
itself with glory and with bliss, as the summer breeze 
brings me your words of love mingling with the soft 
wooing air! Oh, come, sweet summer, and, oh, come 


my sweeter love! Your own 
ETHEL. 


LETTER FIFTH. 


MY OWN DEAR ERNEST, 

As the snows of winter wear away, as the stern 
coldness yields little by little to the wooing sun, as 
the bits, of grass show themselves with a whispered 
promise that they will ere long be green and bright 
once more—the thought of you comes with more of 
welcome, more of renewal, more of promise to my 
heart than even summer can offer to weary Nature. 
It is a source of joy to me that your image is so inter- 
woven with my summer dreams, that our interviews, 
our mutual associations are so completely removed 
from the sphere of ordinary conventionalisms and all 
‘social fictions,” and lifted into the purer and more 
serene atmosphere of external nature. Our hearts 
have learned to love and trust each other—not in the 


midst of gaiety and fashion, not in the ball-room, nor 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 95 


even by the fireside with its pleasant and genial but 
also varied and broken inner life—but in the clear air 
of heaven, and amid the sweet influences of the 
glorious summer. We have worshipped in a hype- 
thral temple, and the sun has beamed upon us with 
warm and loving glances as we have grown to love 
each other, or the moon has smiled on us as we have 
acknowledged that love, while the sea has chanted its 
sweetest, grandest, fullest anthem, as we have hushed 
our hearts into awe-struck but happy silence. We 
have joined in its great Te Deum, though our lips 
have not moved, and in our devotion to each other we 
have not forgotten the Great Father from whom our 
love and our joy have come. I should have loved 
you, doubtless, had all environments been otherwise ; 
my hand would have thrilled in yours had it been 
clasped in the gayest dance, my heart would have 
gone forth to meet you had we been hedged in by the 
most formal courtesy, and my whole soul would have 
melted beneath the fire of your glance had it fallen 
on me only as I stood amid the crowd. But it is 


beautiful not to struggle with these adverse influences, 


96 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


—beautiful to have been spared all these drawbacks, all 
these chilling and dwarfing environments. It has 
been the more delightful to me because my heart was 
already so weary with those outside shows; that it 
longed so for relief from what had weighed it down 
tillit seemed there was never more to be any freedom 
for it. 

And, more than all, dear Ernest, there has been the 
sense of contrast to me in all our intercourse: the 
contrast with that first feverish dream of mine. How 
can I be thankful enough that I dare speak of the past 
to you as to my ownsoul; that you know even as I 
know, just what that experience was; that you under- 
stand just how much of my heart and life were 
absorbed by it, and just how much remained un- 
touched! Above all, that you recognise as Ido, how 
powerful that experience has been in developing, in 
strengthening, and in bringing out all of myself which 
is best worth knowing and being. A less generous 
man than yourself would have reproached me when I 
have sometimes trembled at my recollections; a less 


loving one would not have forgiven my first wayward 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 97 


struggles against your growing influence over me; a 
less noble, a less wise, a less far-seeing man, would 
never have understood, have sympathized with, 
assisted and trusted me, as you have done. You can 
never know how full of grandeur your position 
towards me has been, for a portion of its beauty has 
consisted in the very unconsciousness and simplicity 
with which you have acted out your own self. And 
the reward is yoursin all its fulness. The dream is 
passed and powerless; more than all, it is known to 
have been a dream, and the reality of my whole life 
has been almost untouched ; the strength of my whole 
soul has been unimpaired; the fire and earnestness of 
my whole being have been unexhausted, that I might 
stand forth in full knowledge of myself, and give 
myself to you for ever. How every feverish emotion, 
every childish impulse, every extravagant outburst, 
fade away into fantastic shadows, and pale before the 
clear and glowing sunlight of my great love for you. 
Now I know what itis to love. Ismile to think what 
I once imagined it to be. 


I was so young when all that I now call “ the past ” 
5 


9S Ethel’s Love-Life. 


happened to me! It seems so far away, so mist-like 
and vague, compared to the sharp-cut and real emo- 
tions of the present. I was but. sixteen when I first 
met Percy Hamilton. Was he not a fitting hero for 
a young girl’s romance? I look at him now from a 
simply zesthetic point of view, and I cannot wonder 
that, upon an impressible, enthusiastic girl like me, 
he produced the effect of a god-like apparition. I 
wonder at this no more than I do at my perfect calm- 
ness in looking back upon it, or at the utter power- 
lessness for influence which such a person would have 
upon me now. How magnificently handsome he was! 
The very absence of manly energy was an additional 
charm to that delicate, spiritual, poetic face of his; to 
my inexperienced judgment it told, not of weakness 
and inaptitude for a world of reality, but only of 
refined ideality and poetry. The dreamy languor of 
those large soft eyes seemed so in keeping with the 
sweet low voice, the slight and fragile figure, and 
even those small white hands which many a woman 
envied. But I think, after all, the great fascination 


he exercised over me, apart from the charm of his 


Ethel’s Love-Lite. 99 


long-continued wooing, lay in the fact that with me 
he was so utterly unlike what he was in the world at 
large. . His calm and high-bred indifference and lan- 
guor were exchanged for a timid eagerness, an excite- 
ment almost uncontrollable; his voice would tremble 
when he spoke to me, even in the presence of others. 
I have seen him turn pale when I entered the room, 
even though it seemed impossible that he could, from 
his position, have observed my entrance; and have 
seen his countenance vary In apparent response to 
what I have said to others, at so great a distance as to 
preclude all possibility of his haying heard the words 
I uttered. Whenever I was in the crowd I knew that 
he saw me, though he never attracted the attention of 
those about him by appearing to follow my moye- 
ments; his languid and somewhat careless general 
manner never varied so as to be perceptible to a stran- 
ger. I never saw him really look at any other woman, 
or appear to be aware of the gaze of others upon him; 
though he was a decided favorite in general society, 
he seemed only sufficiently conscious of the presence 


of others to go through the external forms of polite- 


- 


- 


100 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


ness in his own graceful way, remaining, so far as 
their individuality was concerned, in the complete 
solitude of his own soul. But when his eye met mine 
it was as if his whole heart longed to pour itself forth 
in one glance. I used to tremble at his look, spite of 
my delight at calling it forth; the intensity of that 
mournful longing, the depth of that sad bitterness 
which dwelt there when he thought me cold to him, 
or the triumphant gleam, the fiery exultation, which 
flashed like lightning over me if he won any expres- 
sion of love from me,—oh, it was all so strange from 
him, and so different from what the world saw in 
him, that there was all the charm of mystery, all the 
piqnancy of exclusiveness to heighten it for me. 

I never had time for thought, he wrapped me up 
in the whirlwind of his own passion, and swept me 
along so rapidly that I lost breath as it were in the 
flight. I had little opportunity for self-questioning or 
examination, for sensation followed sensation and 
action succeeded action—lI had no time to study him 
dispassionately, for his phases changed with every 


interview, and he varied in everything but in his love 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 101 


for me; he used to say that his love was really him- 
self, and that all his other feelings, actions, words, 
were but as the garments which he put on-for a day 
or for an occasion. Yet I could always soothe his 
wildest excitement even as I roused it, and a storm of 
reproaches about some trifle, or the intensest out- 
pouring of passion which would follow some fancied 
injustice towards him, would yield to the sweetest 
and most confiding trust, the most entire and unques- 
tioning self-surrender. He was of a most jealous 
temper too—I was continually in fear of a scene— 
perhaps needlessly so, since the conventional self- 
control he had acquired through so much intercourse 
with society, never really deserted him, and his pride 
also stood him in good stead;—but when we were 
alone together, the paroxysms of his jealous rage 
were frightful—and yet I never loved him half so 
well as when I needed all my own energy to with- 
stand him, and when he was lifted up from the posi- 
tion of a suppliant lover into that of an imperious 
tyrant. You may imagine what a strange and change- 


able intercourse we had—I was in a kind of delirium 


102 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


of excitement all the time, there was no lack of 
romance, no deficiency of sentiment; I thought there 
was in the world no grander and no truer love. I 
sometimes think there was incipient madness in his 
veins, for storm followed calm and calm followed 
storm faster than the clouds pass over the face of 
heaven. I have dreaded sometimes that in his fear 
of losing me he would kill both himself and me—he 
often threatened to do this; for he declared, in moments 
of despondency, that he knew that Fate would sepa- 
rate us unless he put it out of the power of Fate to do 
so. Do you not think he meant to do it at the last? 
I think so, though I have never breathed the thought 
to any but yourself. . 
And when Fate, or, as I am glad to think, the 
good God—took up this thread of my life and lifted it 
far out of his reach or of my own, when human 
words and human deeds were alike powerless—when 
Heaven seemed to point its finger with a gesture not 
to be mistaken or disobeyed, and when with stream- 
ing eyes and yearning heart I turned away from him, 


to follow in the Heaven-directed path—a strange 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 103 


calmness came over him—from which, fool that I was, 
I augured well. I left him with a heart full of hope 
for him, I fancied that I had in some way over-esti- 
mated the strength and violence of his passion, and in 
the satisfaction which this thought gave me came the 
first gleam of consciousness that my own love was 
not my life as I had always imagined it to be. 

Six hours afterwards I stood beside his corpse, feel- 
ing myself a murderess as I gazed on that pale brow 
and kissed those closed eyes which had never looked 
on me in aught but love. I had never dreamed of 
this horrible termination of our love, even though he 
had often sworn to part from me only with his life, 
for I had become so accustomed to his fiery expres- 
sions that I looked upon them as a part of himself, 
harmonious with his general intensity of tone, and not 
indicating any settled purpose of action. But the 
letter which he wrote after leaving me in the morning, 
the careful arrangement of all the minor details of the 
fearful deed, and the journal which was sent me with 
all his other papers in accordance with his will—all 


revealed his long-formed determination. Can you 


104 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


wonder that the thought of doubt with which I had 
parted from him, the faint suspicion that entered into 
my mind as to the entireness of my devotion to him, 
should have seemed the blackest treason to my dead 
lover, and that remorse and reaction should have 
brought back all my tenderness? It seemed but a 
poor return for his own great love. The horror of 
the circumstances, the shock and mystery of such a 
sudden ‘death in life,” the bitter anguish of knowing 
that he died by his own hand and went, stained with 
blood, to meet his God,—and then the thought that 
but for me all this would not have been—came upon 
me with such mighty power that I sank under it. 
For months I lay hovering between life and death— 
the first violence of delirium changed into a settled 
and silent melancholy, in which I prayed only for 
death, and it seemed to those who loved and watched 
over me, during that long and dreary time, that my 
sun of life was setting, even before the noon had 
come. But in these long hours of silence, self- 
questioning arose within me; I lived many years of 


thought, I began to learn the secret of my life, and 


Ethel’s Love-Life. ? 105 


very gradually and very sadly to prepare myself, not 
for the death for which at first I had so vehemently 
prayed, but for a joyless, though not aimless life. I 
learned to know, as a truth personal to myself, that 
God had ordered all things well, that I was but an 
instrument for some great purpose, and that out of 
seeming evil, I could hope to bring actual and great 
good. I learned to look at my own love for Hamil- 
ton in its true light, and to accept its ministration to 
my heart. And although I found that it had not 
destroyed in me the deepest energies of my nature, it 
did not lose its dignity and truth, but remained, as it 
must always remain, an honest but an insufficient 
reality. In its birth it was the quick enthusiasm of 
my own heart, responsive to the demands of another, 
in its death it retained its beauty, though it lost its 
active influence. 

As my physical strength returned to me, my mental 
balance was completely restored. I felt as if awaking 
from a long and vivid dream, a night-mare of the 
consciousness. Very slowly I returned to active life, 


very gently was I led from the seclusion of my cham- 
5* 


100 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


ber and the silence of its darkness to the fair scenes 
of the nature I loved so well. I cannot describe my 
emotion when I first breathed the external air, first 
lifted my eyes to the blue sky, first felt the delicious 
warmth of the sun. It was an unmingled delight, 
though I was exhausted and silent from my extreme 
weakness, which made even this an excitement greater 
than I could bear. But I was soon able to drink in 
large draughts of the renovating air, to enjoy to the 
utmost the sunshine and the breeze. In the scenes of 
nature there was nothing to jar upon me, nothing to 
awaken sudden and startling images of the past. My 
intercourse with Hamilton had always been in the 
midst of society and city life. My remembrances of 
him were associated with lighted halls and gay music; 
my most quiet recollections of him were connected 
with my own city home, and mingled with a thousand 
gay and changing externalities. Our nearest approach 
to solitude had been amid books and pictures, our 
isolation had been self-created and never wholly dis- 
sociated from companionship. My mother now took 


me to the seashore, and I spent all the hours of that 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 107 


long and thoughtful summer with the sound of the 
eternal sea mingling in my dreams by night and in 
my thoughts by day. From that sound itself there 
seemed at last to come forth a promise that I should 
emerge from the stagnation of my sorrow and some- 
time arise to renewed life and effort, and when I grew 
stronger and could sit by the shore itself, I drew in 
with each breath renewed vitality and hope through 
sight and sound of the wonderful ocean. And the 
summer sun warmed the cold pulses of my blood, and 
I grew in that sweet solitude once more myself, or not 
myself alone, but a new power had been added to me. 
I was myself, but with new, and better, and higher prin- 
ciples of life; the gay and thoughtless exuberance of 
my old spirit had grown up to a more settled and 
earnest purpose, the keen susceptibility to all emotions, 
though saddened, was not subdued; the intellectual 
power, though chastened, was not weakened. All 
that the seaand sky said to my sick heart during those 
months of communion I may never hope to tell; but 
you know now why I love the sea and the summer- 


time so well—I owe my life to them. 


108 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


The following winter I spent in my home again, 
but in the strictest seclusion. My friends all acqui- 
esced in my desire for repose, and I am grateful still 
for the gentle consideration, the kindly neglect (sym- 
pathy I could not then have borne) of those about me. 
When the spring opened once more, another fearful 
blow fell upon me—my brother Eustace died. He was 
the only one from whom sympathy and pity had been 
tolerable to me at the time of Hamilton’s death; the 
only one to whom my heart had gone forth in my 
hour of desolation, as he was the only one who had 
dared to come to me with all the cruel but necessary 
details of that tragedy. From him I had first learned 
that another drop of bitterness was added to my cup— 
that the death of my lover had made me wealthy to 
excess. Hamilton, who loved and trusted him before 
I had learned to do so, had implored him to keep 
secrecy upon the tenor of his will, made some six 
months before his death, when the severe illness 
which had threatened to terminate fatally, suggested to 
him the absence of all legal claim which the woman 


he loved had upon aught that he possessed. He 


Ethel'’s Love-Life. 109 


seems even then to have had a presentiment that I 
should never be his wife, and in the impulsive gen- 
erosity of his nature, made a will by which he 
settled all his great wealth unconditionally upon 
me. I could not keep that wealth; it was impos- 
sible for me to regard it as any thing but a sacred 
trust. With my brother’s aid I therefore executed 
all the legal instruments for conveying the pro- 
perty into those channels which I thought most in 
unison with the tastes and habits of poor Hamilton. 
I would have given it all to his few and distant rela- 
tives, had I not known that they did not need it, and 
that he neither loved nor had reason to love them. 
For the honor of his name, however, I gave them a 
portion of the family estate, but after that claim was 
satisfied I felt that I might guide myself entirely by 
my knowledge of his sentiments on all subjects of 
charity and objects of liberality. I reserved for 
myself only his choice library, a few of his favorite 
paintings, and several trifles especially associated with 
my own intercourse with him. To my brother I 


gave the beautiful horse which was Percy’s pride, 


110 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


and his huge dog, who is savage to all the world but 
me, still remains the companion of all my rambles, 
the guard of my s.umbers, and the terror of all my 
more timid friends. I receive a richer income from 
my own heart, and a more lavish pleasure from look- 
ing at those who have thriven under the bounty 
which has thus passed through my hands, than from 
all which that wealth might have purchased of selfish 
enjoyment. I even dare to feel certain that he has 
looked on approvingly at all that I have done in his 
name. It was in the intimate communion which these 
arrangements brought about between Eustace and 
myself that I first learned to appreciate the true 
nobility of his nature, to look beneath his cold reserve 
of manner to his strong manly heart, and to love him 
with amore intense and individual devotion than the | 
blind affection common between brother and sister, 
His sympathy was so unexpected, his understanding 
of and reverence for my feelings so complete, his 
consolations so delicate, and his counsels so manly and 
straightforward, that I trusted him implicitly, and 


learned to love him with intense fondness. We 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 111 


would gladly have left the will a secret, but circum- - 
stances rendered it utterly impossible; and you may 
imagine how hard an ordeal it was for me to come a 
second time before the world in the character of a 
heroine, while my heart was so sad and my spirit so 
weak within me. But Hustace was always near to 
shield or to cheer and support me. 

When he became ill I knew that he must die; 
from the first moment I had seen the shadow of death 
upon him. He, too, felt the warning, and to me, but 
to none else, could he speak of it; the atmosphere of 
sorrow and death in which I had so long dwelt made 
our conversation less jarring and less unnatural than 
it could be with those to whom gloom and darkness 
are new experiences; there were already so many 
sources of sympathy established between us, too, that 
we felt no reserve in speaking with each other. It 
seemed to me my heart must break as I watched him, 
day by day, releasing more of his hold on life, break- 
ing link by link the chain which bound him to earth, 
and serenely adjusting all his personal affairs, as if 


glad to be able to relieve others of any charge in 


112 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


regard to them. He arranged with scrupulous care 
all his private papers, closed up all his business con- 
nections with the outside world, with the same calm 
and even cheerful countenance with which he came 
to talk with me of his hopes and his faith in the 
future. How much he taught me during that sad 
season God alone, to whom he led me, can ever know. 
How his weak and failing nature, wrung by torturing 
pains, imparted strength and courage to her who 
should have been strong enough to give to him, in 
that dark hour, the Power from whom he drew his 
strength can alone tell. So well did I learn my lesson 
that I was able to lay him in the dust with a calmness 
that surprised all who knew how dearly I had loved 
him, yet did not know the sources of my inward 
strength. 

I wrestled with my two great griefs in silence and 
alone, but my health did not again sink under my 
sorrow. I seemed lifted by it above physical ills or 
susceptibilities, to live my outer life only as subor- 
dinate to the inner, and as removed from it by a barrier 


impassable to my own consciousness, I asked no 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 110 


friendly sympathy as yet, I wished only for solitude 
and freedom, to solve, if possible, the still perplexed 
problem of my own experience—to regain the balance 
within myself,.and to look steadfastly at the past and 
the future. My twenty years of life must be spread 
fairly out before me as a chart for study; and the 
apparent incongruities and contradictions of feeling 
which marked it must be reconciled and explained to 
myself, or the future would have no guiding know- 
ledge, no assured path. Again I sought the seashore 
—again I met the calm, serene summer-time. And, 
more than all, oh! Ernest, I met you. For a long 
time I did not heed those calm dark eyes, nor hear 
that deep-toned voice, nor in the selfish seclusion of 
my sorrow recognise the presence of a spirit that was, 
ere long, to obtain so powerful an influence over me. 
But as the summer weeks went by, and you were still 
near me, offering the unobtrusive courtesies of daily 
life, and quietly respecting my evident desire for soli- 
tude, when my heart renewed its sad memories, I 
gradually emerged from my isolation, and recognising 


your truth of character and your superiority of intel- 


114 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


lect, learned, as I said to myself, to esteem you highly 
as a friend—to prize the occasional hours which you 
bestowed upon meas rich gifts of intellectual treasure. 
Oh, Ernest, how blind I was, and how patient you 
were through all those summer days and all those 
sweet autumn scenes! How you bore with me when, 
at last, I would have scorned you as a friend, because 
you prayed to be my lover—when I indignantly 
denied your laughing assertion that I did not know 
my own heart, as I told you that the future would be 
for me only the grave of the past. And when we sat 
together upon those seashore rocks, beneath that calm 
blue sky, and I told you that my heart was utterly 
dead within me, and related with my own lips the 
history you had before only learned from others, and 
revealed even more than I was aware existed within 
me, of life which that past had not exhausted, you 
did not alarm me by showing that you discerned the 
germ and possible promise of a new love in my heart, 
but controlling your own pardonable exultation, you 
kept to the strictest office of a friend and spoke no 
word of the passion I had bidden you to check. (It 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 115 


must be confessed, Ernest, that you made yourself 
most bounteous amends afterwards!) And I went on 
in my proud unconsciousness, thinking I could do 
without you when the near hour of your departure 
should come, and yet strangely contented that that 
hour should so mysteriously postpone itself. And 
when we parted I would not own, even to-myself, how 
bitterly lonely I felt, or acknowledge how much you 
had been to me, but returned to my old home-routine, 
thinking to find among old friends even more than I 
had found in you. But that winter unveiled me more 
and more unto myself, and as my heart grew hopeful 
and my griefs faded into a holy slumber, I could visit 
the graves in which the beloved ones slept, and feel 
that it was well with them, and that they would that 
it might be well with me. And so gradually did 
your image weave itself into my life, so much did 
I associate you with my beloved dead, that there was 
no shock to me when the full knowledge came that 
you were something more to me than even they could 
ever have been. There was no conflict in my thought 


as I was able to discern the relation of myself to the 


116 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


past in a true and less exaggerated aspect than the 
first bewilderment of affliction would allow. They 
stood as near as ever to my heart, those two noble 
spirits, but their companionship was peace and strength 
now, not hopeless sorrow or blind dismay. I think I 
was almost happy that long cold winter, for summer 
was coming to my heart, and the warmth of renewed 
vitality quickened in my veins. 

Again you followed me to the sea-shore, though 
you had religiously obeyed my request not to come to 
mein my own home. [I shall never forget the intense 
eagerness of your first glance at me, nor the trembling 
of your strong hand as it grasped mine. The winter 
had been a sad trial-time for you, my beloved; you 
knew not of my rapidly growing love for you, saw 
not the hopes and the aspirations which arose within 
me, had no assurance of the result for which you 
prayed. Forgive me that I still delayed for a little 
while that full assurance for which you longed so 
feverishly. The pleasant hours wore away, the sun- 
shine and the sea grew even more dear to me, and at 


length I told you of my winter-life, and once more 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 117 


seeking the memories of the past to reveal their new 
significance to me, I stood forth in the presence of my 
dead lover and my dead brother, with no disloyalty 
to them in my heart, as I confessed my love for you; 
I felt in my inmost soul a sweet assurance that they 
sanctioned and approved. That conviction has never 
left me; my young, passionate, girlish love, and my 
trusting, reverent, sisterly affection have led the way 
and prepared my heart for the reception of the great 
love which is to be the master-principle of my true 
being, the crown and beauty of my mature life. Ihad 
found out, too, that it was yourself, more than sea or 
shore, that had brought back my life to me; but I 
did not love my ocean or my summer less—they com- 
bined themselves with your own image, mingled 
with my thoughts of you and with my recollections 
of your words and looks—and now, at least, you will 
not quarrel with me for loving them so well. Were 
they not by when you told me that you must speak 
again, and that your words must be of love? . Did 
they not whisper to you, before I dared do so, that 


you might speak with no fear of a second repulse? 


118 Ethel’s Love-Life 


Did they not listen as intently as I did to every word 
that fell from your lips, did they not hear the throb- 
bing of my heart, and did not the sea give to the 
shore the same exulting kiss as that which burned 
upon my cheek? Did not the sun smile upon us as 
we sat side by side, and the summer breeze whisper 
its knowledge of our happiness? Oh, yes! and you 
too love the summer and the sea even as I love them. 

And we shall have our first home by the sea, as you 
say, and our first unbroken communion shall be, as 
our first, young, timid utterances were—witnessed 
and hallowed by those loving influences. I have 
learned to trust myself so entirely to you, to live so 
in your being, that, in some sense, summer and winter, 
seashore and city, are now alike to me; but I confess 
that another joy seems added to the picture of my 
future, when I think that we can leave the world 
behind us for awhile, and that you, like myself, find 
pleasure in the thought that the first months of that 
united love that shall so soon commence, to be ended 
neither on earth nor in heaven, will be passed with 


only Nature as companion unto us. 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 119 


How can I be glad enough, dearest, that I have 
learned to know myself before I really give myself 
away? Above all, how can I be glad enough that 
you, to whom I give myself, know what you are 
taking, without disguise, without reserve, without one 
shadow which might else rise up to dim our future as 
it has that of many another life. I am glad that you 
will have me thus go over and study out my past; I 
rejoice to reveal all that it contains to your searching 
but loving gaze. I lay it all, with my heart, at your 
feet—take of it as it shall please you—it has all tended 
to ennoble, as it is all included in, my devotion to 
yourself. Your own 


ETHEL. 


LETTER SIXTH. 


You tell me, dear Ernest, that you are not yet weary 
of my chaotic reminiscences, that you can even make 
order and sequence out of them, and seem to arrive, 
little by little, at a more thorough understanding of 
my inner soul as I reveal more and more the past 
history of my inward consciousness. I am glad that 
it is so with you, and that you ask from me, not so 
much a recital of events, as of states of feeling and 
contrasted moods of mind, which, in one constituted 
as I am, are of infinitely greater value in forming a true 
estimate of my individual attitude in regard even to the 
externalities by which I am surrounded. I would 
have you know me thus deeply, thus thoroughly; I 
would spread out before you those isolated but 
strongly painted pictures of my past, which represent 


me when the accumulation of influences from without 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 121 


and from within have brought about a crisis of my 
heart, have concentrated into visibility the usually 
unseen emotions which sway the inner pulses. These 
pictures I place before you just as they come up to 
my Own memory, without arrangement and almost 
without date; it matters little when an incident took 
place so long as the results of that incident upon the 
character are clearly perceived and fairly allowed. I 
must only regulate myself by those sympathetic 
influences which arise within me as I look back upon 
“the days that are no more,” and which, at different 
times, cause different recollections to come with more 
power and demand more minute description. There- 
fore you have in my letters, not only the relation of 
the past, but, running parallel with that, a transcript 
of the present state of my mind, through the selection 
which I involuntarily make from the many different 
scenes through which I take you. We learn little 
of an individual nature from seeing, even with a 
great degree of intimate intercourse, only the daily, 
external life one leads; we learn much, if even for 


a moment he lifts the veil which covers and conceals 
6 


122 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


the working of his motives, the springs of his feelings, 
the sources of his inspiration and the result for which 
he labors. Just in proportion as our friends reveal 
unto us their inner mechanism, just in proportion as 
they can impart and we attain to a true knowledge 
of the interior nature which lies behind all their 
visible life, just so much are they really ours. If the 
capability of this understanding be mutual and spon- 
taneous, we see the most holy and beautiful friendship 
that can exist—its very rarity makes it seem more 
fair—its superiority to all low obstacles and clogging 
earthliness, makes us recognise its inherent immor- 
tality. It seems to me, beloved Ernest, that between 
us two it may exist in perfection, that we can each 
infuse into the other, in a wonderful degree, those 
influences which modify or control each of our minds, 
that we, to an unusual extent, find ourselves swayed 
by similar emotions at the same moment, that the 
natural current of our psychological forces flows 
without effort in the same direction, governed by. the 
same impulses, and responding to the same magnetic 


vibrations. Oh, do you know what peace I find in 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 123 


this thought—what a beautiful future it opens before 
us? That there should be no need of struggle 
betweer us, no yielding upon one side because there 
shall be no conquering upon the other,—how serenely 
joyful it will be to us who have already had enough 
of struggle and enough of victory. Sometimes I 
wonder at your almost feminine intuitions, your 
exquisite appreciation of the most delicate shades of 
feeling—-since your life has been no idle summer 
dream, no mere poetic fancy; but a hard fought bat- 
tle with the stern reality of things. How can I be 
glad enough that through all you have kept this 
truth of heart, this quick spiritual insight, this warm 
and ready sympathy, and that now it is all for me! 
What am I, oh, Ernest, that Heaven should grant me 
such a boon? I almost tremble at the richness of 
my treasure, when I remember the poorness of my 
own desert; but I glory in the possession of a heart 
so strong and high, a nature so full and great 
as yours. None less than thine could give repose to 
mine, none less responsive supply the feverish haste 


of my own longings in the dark hours of my soul’s 


124 Ethel’s Love-Life. - 


life. Thou must be to me a perennial fountain, else 
I shall perforce drain thy heart. A fate is on me 
hitherto that I should draw so relentlessly upon my 
loves that I have learned shame of myself at finding — 
how soon there was nothing left to slake my thirst, 
and have questioned if they were really “shallow 
cisterns holding no water,” or if I were a guilty 
spendthrift of their precious gifts. But with you, 
Ernest, I am at last at peace—I seem to have turned 
away from the streams which bubbled in the careless 
sunshine long ago, to have outrun the rivers that 
flowed noisily on their way, only to find myself upon 
the glorious ocean, to rest in the unfathomable depth 
of your noble nature. What can even the mighty 
torrent of my own free, mountain-born stream add to 
the grandeur of your swelling tides? I lose myself 
in you with joy! 

But I look in vain for reasons why you should be 
all mine—I find but one most selfish one, and that is, 
the greatness of my need of you, the deep unsatisfied 
longing, the bitter loneliness that must have been 


mine had you not been sent unto me. You tell me 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 125 


very sweetly that the readiness, the absolute eager- 
ness of response I meet in you, is owing to your hay- 
ing never loved before, that all your better nature, 
rigidly locked up within itself, needed but the master- 
key to open the gateway to the pent-up flood; you 
laughingly caution me against my danger of drown- 
ing from the accumulations which, in others, have been 
gradually disposed of in minor loves and more vari- 
ous passions, but in you have never had but this one 
outlet. Pour forth the swelling floods without 
measure and without stint, oh, rarest heart—I ride 
upon the mounting waves, I revel in the rushing 
waters, the noise of the surging billows is music in 
my ears and strength unto my heart. 

How amid the self-seclusion of your heart-life, the 
self-imposed silence of your emotional nature, you 
have kept your susceptibilities so keen, your sympa- 
thies so ready, and your expressional power so full 
and rich—how you have avoided doubt and distrust 
and sceptical analysis, I, with my tendency to morbid 
weakness, can hardly comprehend. With so much to 


contend against, so many obstacles to conquer, and so 


126 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


much hard work to be done, why have not you, like 
other men, grown hard and cold and scornful and 
bitter? With a man’s strength you have kept a 
woman’s tenderness, with the voice which can speak 
the sternest words I ever heard, when there needs to 
be a stern word spoken,—you can whisper the 
sweetest and most gentle message of encouragement 
and help. I have never, for a moment, seen the ten- 
derness tinged with the sternness, and never known 
the sternness weakened by a misplaced tenderness, 
Yes, you are indeed like my own ocean, Ernest ;—no 
petty breezes ruffle your serenity, but the sunshine 
finds its own calmness reflected in you, and only the 
mightiest winds and the solemn murmur of the waves 
are like your wrath when the storm is really awakened. 
I should love your tenderness less and rejoice in your 
gentleness with more of doubt, did I not also know 
this other side of your strong manly nature. I should 
nestle in the sunshine less securely, did I not know 
the power of the storms that have raged, for in both 
your aspects I find equal sympathy for my own way- 


ward and contrastive moods. You have my contrasts 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 127 


without my waywardness, you have greater power of 
direction than IJ, and you shall guide me as you guide 
yourself, not by repressing and condemning even the 
power of anger and of contempt, but by giving it 
honest work to do and lofty sweep of action. May I 
but fill the loving part of your nature with genial 
tenderness, as you fill my weak heart with strength, 
and thus make up to you in your future for all the 
isolation of your past! 

Such an external barrenness as surrounded your 
early life in reality, I used, in my morbid seasons, to 
fancy was about myself. I have told you of my 
tendency to reverie, and of my long-continued day- 
dreams, but I have not told you how bitterly I 
suffered for a long while. from the hopelessly gloomy 
coloring which they finally acquired. I suppose the 
delicate state of my health must have had something 
to do with this morbid sensibility, and at any rate it 
increased my inability to struggle against it. It how- 
ever became so much a part of myself, it interwove 
itself so thoroughly into the very texture of my heart’s 


life, as to enslave every perception I possessed, and to 


128 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


dominate over every impression I received. Nothing 
but the living actuality of abundant and most patient 
love, poured on me with no niggard hand, conquered 
this misanthropic bitterness and -drove away this 
moral gloom. You have seen me only since this ten- 
dency has been dead within me, and can hardly 
understand how it once tyrannized over me and what 
danger I was in. It was even worse than my habit 
of analysis, and for a time seemed less likely to be 
subdued. It reigned paramount in my days of 
earliest womanhood, and perhaps nothing short of 
my somewhat stormy experiences would have sufficed 
to drive out the demon. I sometimes indulged these 
fancies with a kind of desperate enjoyment, but gen- 
erally I struggled heartily against them, thongh in 
vain. Unlike other spiritual and intellectual difficul- 
ties, the power to conquer came from without. The 
wayward imaginations which filled me with bitterness, 
the conviction that weighed me down in those days of 
presumptuous ignorance, haunted me with the belief 
that I was born for misery and loneliness, and must 


go through life unknowing and unknown to the sweet 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 129 


influences of a noble friendship or a true love. I 
know that it 1s very common for the young to have 
passing fancies similar to this, and to imagine it a 
proof of greatness to be unhappy; to find a strange 
charm in unsatisfied longings, and to turn from happi- 
ness as too common-place; but there was none of this 
affectation of sentiment in my misery; it was a dark 
reality, at which I often rebelled with all my strength, 
which crushed my soul within me, in spite of all my 
efforts to escape from its galling bondage. It assumed 
every variety of form, and tinged every emotion I 
experienced. Sometimes it seemed to me that there 
was really no heart within me; no warm and 
kindly blood in my pulseless, passionless frame; no 
out-going energy, and no capacity for reception of it 
from without. I seemed to myself a completely 
exceptional organization, outside of the laws which 
governed those about me; impenetrable to the influ- 
ences which swayed their existence. I had no feeling 
save that of stupid and cold indifference. These 
seasons of torpor were so heavy that there was no 


power-in imagination to paint pictures fair enough to 
6* 


130 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


awaken one emotion of interest or rouse one thrill of 
expectation; nor could the most -vivid image of 
suffering or prophecy of woe cause any shrinking or 
any dread. All was vague and shadowy; happiness 
was an insane fancy, sorrow only a disagreeable sound. 
I could never enjoy the one, and I need never fear 
the other. The strongest passions and the truest 
attachments were only dreamy speculations, varied 
involuntarily by the temperament and position of the 
individual nature in which they arose. I lost all 
heart and hope and faith in others and myself. I 
doubted all capacity in my own heart, and all exist- 
ence in others, of any active, spontaneous, ennobling 
emotion. I finally sat down, contented, as I thought, 
in my miserable delusion, trying to persuade myself, 
not only, that all was hollow and unreal, but that I 
was satisfied that it should be so: and that I asked for 
nothing else. I reasoned myself into a state of nega- 
tion so thorough that I neither loved nor hated, 
desired nor dreaded. I was a sort of moral. som- 
nambulist, walking through the world with my eyes 


open, but my perceptions closed. The daily life 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 131 


around me, the home-circle in which I dwelt, were all 
shadows; people belonging to it came and went 
before me as a pageant on which I looked with 
passive indifference. It seemed to me that I pos- 
sessed complete control over my own organism; that 
I could do anything within my consciousness except 
be happy, and that being an impossibility for any 
one whose spiritual eyes had been opened, I had 
no reason to complain over an inevitable necessity. 
I fancied there was no misfortune that would call forth 
a tear; no loss which would be worth a sigh; no hope 
which could make my leaden heart beat quicker than 
its wont, but that I could maintain the same immovable 
indifference, the same unshaken pulse, through any 
possible experience. Had this condition been pro- 
duced by any actual disappointment, any acute suffer- 
ing, or any really discouraging circumstances, it would 
have been followed at some time by a natural revulsion 
of feeling; it would, like a fever, have had its crisis 
and its limit, beyond which its violence could not 
go, and after which, in one so young, it would have 


retraced its steps and brought me to a more health- 


132 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


ful and biioyant condition. But in my case it came 
on without apparent cause, and so gradually, that 
it seemed merely the development of some inborn 
quality; it raged with no violence, roused little 
antagonism, was content without manifestation, and 
asked for no relief in sympathy; in short, it was a 
subtle poison breathing through my whole being. 
There was danger that this would always remain the 
prevailing tone of my mind. Still there was behind 
all a timid hope, not quite dead, though mainly silent, 
and only at rarest intervals appearing even to my 
own heart, of something better. I dared not quite 
believe that there was no blue sky high up above the 
darkening clouds that closed in over my head. I 
would have welcomed any storm that would have 
broken those dark rifts; but I would not acknowledge 
or believe this till I felt the glad rebound of my heart 
when the clear sunshine at last burst forth upon me. 

Sometimes this morbid disposition took another 
form, and induced seasons of intense suffering. It 
was no longer indifference that I felt—I was no 


longer in a state of stagnant unconsciousness, but in a 


Ethel’s Love-Life. ie Te 


felt darkness and desolation. My heart was not 
senseless, but only too keenly alive. The least jar 
gave me exquisite pain; a careless word stung me to 
the quick, and a loving one brought unbidden tears 
to my eyes—the tension of my whole nature was 
frightful. I lost the balance of my faculties, and 
sought the completest solitude and the strictest silence 
to conceal my wanderings from the knowledge of 
others. My dreams grew fanciful with horror or 
radiant with intangible delight. I revelled in ima- 
ginings of the bliss I was capable of, only to turn 
with loathing from their impossible suggestions. I 
shrank with affright from the fearful agony that 
visited me at other times and thrilled through every 
fibre of my being. And though in the movement of 
my daily life I emerged from these paroxysms into 
the more real experiences from which I could not 
quite seclude myself, it was only to complain within 
my own heart of the common-placeness of my every- 
day comfort. The happiness which satisfied others, 
and which seemed to be equally within my own 


reach, was too prosaic to be worth grasping,—I 


134 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


would have none of it—I.would prefer the brilliant 
lies of my dreams, and pay the penalty of their alter- 
nating terrors. J grew very wretched, as I thought 
that I must wander through a world externally so 
beautiful, and never find in it the nourishment I 
craved—never obtain the bliss I knew myself capable 
of feeling, never meet with hearts that could really 
answer unto mine. I scorned what the rest of the 
world seemed to find well enough. I asked for 
friendship higher and purer, sympathy more vast and 
elevated than any one seemed able to give me—I 
demanded love far more passionate and far-more holy 
than the ignorant admiration of those of my social 
circle, who approached me with their homage, appear- 
ed capable of experiencing. 

How dark the heavens were above me—how the 
* summer air chilled me—how coldly the sun smiled at 
me, and how far-off the stars seemed! I met no 
glance of pity for the intense, unsatisfied longings of 
my young heart, and I wept bitter tears of anguish. 
But this state was more hopeful than the first, because 


it was more active and more extravagant—it bore 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 135 


within itself the seeds of a revulsion—the promise of 
a change. 

I was indeed destined to awake from this abnormal 
condition of mind and heart, through a personal 
experience which I could not deny or put aside, as I 
had always done the less obtrusive suggestions of my 
calm daily life. I had doubted the existence of every- 
thing beautiful and true in the human life—I was 
destined to see that which I had despised rise up in 
grandeur before me. I had doubted the possibility of 
friendship, and Claudia was to come to me and prove 
my doubt a treason against truth. I had persuaded 
myself that the natural affections of family and 
kindred were merely the result of monotonous habit, 
in which we acquiesce, partly from indolence and 
partly from fear of finding nothing better if we gave 
it up,—I was destined to behold the very heart-beats 
of a mother’s love—the strong pulsation of a father’s 
devotion. I had questioned my own susceptibility 
and my own dependence—I was to find myself a 
helpless infant in the strong arms of love, a thing of 


nerves and sensibilities that every wind of heaven 


136 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


could awaken. And this new life was given me, not 
through the sharp and stern lessons of sorrow and 
affliction, not through lacerated or crushed affections, 
not even through severe mental conflict—but amid 
physical suffermg and utter helplessness which, 
though hard to endure in the passing, seem to my 
remembrance but as the throes which were necessary 
to usher into existence my new-born soul. 

I was about sixteen when this terrible illness 
attacked me. Perhaps my mental condition aggravated 
the violence of the disorder; however that may be, 
the fever assumed a contagious and most malignant 
form. For a long time my delirium was frightful, my 
agony intolerable, no words can express what I 
endured of torture and of horror. Visions of all fear- 
ful things, dreams of darkness and phantoms of dread 
hung over my couch as I lay there helpless for long 
weeks. It was on emerging from my delirious state 
that I was able to realize how much I was beloved by 
those to whom, in my distrust, I had done so much 
injustice. Long before I could utter the simplest 


words of gratitude I had read whole volumes of love 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 137 


and prayed long prayers of true repentance. The 
time of my delirium had been no blank in my 
consciousness. J could, to be sure, recall only in a 
confused way my own sensations and expressions, but 
what others had done remained before my eyes as a 
freshly painted picture, at which I was now able to 
gaze with understanding interest. The faces that had 
clustered around my bed with all their variety of 
anxious and awe-struck expression—my mother’s 
pale face and tearful eyes, my father’s prostrate grief, 
my brother’s vain attempts at self-control, and my 
cousin Kmily’s quiet but evident distress, were indeli- 
bly impressed upon my memory at the moment when 
they supposed me beyond all sensation and passing 
into the silent unconsciousness of death. I knew 
that all this anxiety and grief were for me, and yet 
I hardly understood why it was, at that moment, 
brought to such culmination of expression. All I 
was conscious of was a sudden thrill passing over me, 
a delicious sense of joy in the possession of so much 
love. I think it saved my life, for it infused such 


new energy into my heart, that against all prophecy, 


138 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


against all precedent, I turned away from death’s 
open gate, to re-enter on the path of life. In the 
long interval which elapsed before I recovered my 
strength, I had leisure to review and analyse more 
truly my past, and to make fresh resolutions for my 
future. How could I ever repay so much love, which, 
now that the veil had been lifted from my eyes, in 
that hour of revelation, had continually renewed its 
manifestations ? What was there in me that could 
merit such layishness of affection, such fulness of love 
as that on which I fed from day to day, as a plant 
feeds on the air in which it grows? How beautiful 
it was to be so watched over, so cared for, every 
moment of the day and of the night. How trans- 
figured in the light and glory of their unselfish love 
stood all those who bent over me with their unwearied 
devotion to the helpless sufferer! How my heart 
throbbed when I was told that not one of all those 
around me had been afraid of risking life in remain- 
ing near me—that danger had lurked in every breath 
in that sick chamber, yet that its close and heavy 


atmosphere had been dearer to them than the air of 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 139 


heaven. How I wondered that I had never before 
detected the clear love-light which beamed in my 
mother’s soft, hazel eyes every time she looked at me, 
never discovered how much her beauty was enhanced 
by the depth of affection which beamed from every 
look, now that I sought for it instead of turning from 
it. How I trembled with pleasure to notice the 
softening of my father’s voice when he spoke to me, 
the tenderness of his glance when he thought me 
asleep and dared to look at me without the assumed 
cheerfulness he put on whenever he saw that I 
observed him. How I longed to be well again that I 
might do something more than receive all this love 
so bounteously bestowed. I bless God that He has 
enabled me, since then, to prove my gratitude and 
repay a portion of my pleasant debt. 

Until this illness, Claudia had’ been only an 
acquaintance, whom I regarded as somewhat more 
noble and true than the world in general, because 
circumstances had made me acquainted with several 
instances of her magnanimity and generous self-denial. 


I had seen too that she was not only attractive of 


140 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


more love and reverence from others than she was 
inclined to give them in return, but that she treated 
me, in our not very frequent meetings with each other, 
in a manner totally unlike that which she manifested 
towards any one else. I had even noticed with a 
faint surprise, that she seemed strangely conversant 
with my tastes and habits of mind, that her mood was 
often in unexpected unison with my own, and that 
she not unfrequently gave utterance to the very 
thoughts which I supposed shut up in my own heart. 
But I was so weighed down with my morbid fancies, 
so utterly inert in my misanthropy, that I permitted 
her image to pass by in the dream-procession which 
moved before my mind with little more perception of © 
her than of the rest. 

I remember that I thought it very singular when I 
looked round on the sorrowful group awaiting my’ 
last breath, to see Claudia among them, and to disco- 
ver in her face a depth of agony quite as intense as 
that which revealed itself upon the features of my rela- 
tives. But I was too weak for anything but the most 


transient emotion of surprise, and I fell into the habit 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 141 


of depending upon her without asking how it hap- 
pened that she had ever begun to nurse me, or 
whether there need be any termination to her atten- 
tion. Of much greater physical strength than my 
mother and clearer mental judgment than my cousin, 
she soon became the chief companion of my convales- 
cence. She was the very sunshine of my day before 
I knew that she was aught but the kindest and most 
patient of nurses. It was not till a month after the 
fever had left me, that I learned that she had come to 
my mother, upon the first intelligence of my illness, 
and besought her with tears to let her be with me. For 
ten weeks she hardly left my bedside. And as I grew 
better she would talk to me for hours in her sweet, | 
low, soothing voice, as I lay quietly happy on my 
bed, of how she grew to love and know me in spite 
of myself, drawn by what she playfully called my 
irresistible magnetic attraction,—how she had suffered 
atmy unfeigned indifference and yet never lost faith that 
her great love must meet with ultimate recognition 
and return, and finally that my illness had seemed to 


her the appointed way for our friendship. 


142 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


That convalescence was a pleasant time in my life, 
dear Ernest,—the whole earth seemed new to me, and 
fair as new. Such a wealth of love was awakened 
within me, that my whole life seemed too short for 
its expression, my whole heart too small for its dwell- 
ing-place. But above this general beneficence of 
mood, aside from this universal kindness which 
clothed my every-day life, there rose up within me a 
passionate love for Claudia, which seemed to take 
root in the very depths of my being. Every day 
revealed her noble nature to me more clearly, every 
day I looked deeper into her loving and true heart, 
and learned better to appreciate her high intellectual 
gifts. The reserve she maintained towards others © 
melted utterly away for me, and nothing could be 
more charming than the transition from her usual 
manner in society to the delicious abandon and merry 
carelessness that accompanied her every word and 
motion in the seclusion of our mutual intercourse. I 
found that she had been a busy student among the 
books I loved the best, a thinker upon subjects that 


had interested my whole soul, and that, in spite of 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 143 


the many points of difference in our characters, we 
were in matters of intellectual king wonderfully 
agreed. She read aloud finely, and many of my 
favorite books have the pleasant echo of her flexible 
and musical voice still lingering among their pages. 
Certain passages of poetry are inseparably associated 
in my memory with the soft rich tones with which 
she repeated them to me, while I was lying, languid 
but not suffering, during my convalescence. Her 
talent for drawing, too, she brought into requisition for 
the amusement of my invalid hours, and it was like a 
sweet breath of country air to look at one of her 
sunny landscapes, and hear her description of the 
scene where she sketched it. It was in her drawings 
that the peculiar characteristics of her ideal nature 
showed themselves most decidedly, and her portfolio 
was full of strange and almost supernatural pictures, 
which seemed doubly wild and fearful by the side of 
the sweet and serene scenes which she always selected 
when she sketched directly from nature. She grew 
very eloquent when explaining to me the meaning of 


her imaginary pictures,—they always had some deep 


144 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


meaning hidden in them, and the key to this once 
supphed, they became full of interest and fascination. 
They furnished the undercurrent of my dreams very 
often, at the time, and even now recur to me occasion- 
ally with vivid power. Claudia was in every respect 
a most delightful companion, full of delicate tact and 
simple kindliness, rich in resources, but never exhaust- 
ing one’s patience by the display of her accomplish- 
ments. She never wearied me even in my hours of 
gréatest prostration ; whether she spoke or whether she 
remained silent, she was always a pleasant and posi- 
tive adjunct to the scene. This wonderful gift of fit- 
ness at all times, to the necessities of the moment, 
might have been partly an acquirement in her, for she 
had seen much of the world, but it seemed to be all 
nature, and made her the most delightful person 
imaginable when she was in a situation 1n consonance 
with her own tastes. The days flew by on wings of 
light while she devoted herself to me, and played by 
turns the careful and gentle nurse, and the brilliant and 
intellectual companion. Her tastes were somewhat 


too decided and peculiar to allow of her being a very 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 145 


general favorite among her casual acquaintances, but 
her very exclusiveness was an additional charm to me. 

It was about this time, too, that I first met Ham- 
ilton. My brother brought him to the house as an 
old college friend of his own, the first evening that my 
physician allowed me to join the family circle for a 
little while. J imagined that it was merely my exces- 
sive paleness and extreme languor that made him turn 
his eyes so often upon me, and the involuntary pity 
of a healthy organization for one so weak and shat- 
tered, that made him, from the first, assume an appa- 
rently unconscious tenderness of manner towards me. 
From that first visit he was an established friend of 
the whole house. My brother already loved and 
esteemed him, and had told me often of his accom- 
plished and poetical mind, and his fastidious tastes, 
sometimes laughingly asserting that his fastidiousness 
reached nearly to the extreme which my own was 
supposed to attain unto—for this charge against me 
was a common jest in the family. My mother was 
charmed by Percy’s graceful deference to herself, my 


cousin Emily was won by his ready appreciation of 


146 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


her musical gifts, and even my father would lay down 
his newspaper to hear what Mr. Hamilton had to say 
on any subject, emphatically pronouncing him ‘a 
very sensible fellow in spite of his handsome face.” 
I withstood the general fascination longer than any- 
one, for even Claudia caught the infection and became 
enthusiastic in his behalf. I used to smile as she 
built up sumptuous castles in the air and described 
their splendors to me, for they were always to be 
inhabited by Percy and me, whom she had placed 
together from the hour of his advent among us. She 
saw, sooner than any one, how he turned to me even 


while speaking to others, how uneasy he became when 


I left the room, and how his face lighted up when he 


found me growing better and stronger in health. His 
constant and delicate devotion to me, and his pas- 
sionate utterance of it, completed the cure of every 
symptom of my old misanthropy and doubt. ‘There 
was absolutely no room for questions in my happy 
life, no excuse for scepticism; the love and trust of 
those about me taught me to judge the whole world 


more kindly, and to see in the whole human nature 


. < 
oe ee oa 


Ethel’s Love-Lite. 147 


more of truth, of grandeur, and of beauty, than I had 
ever guessed at in the old days. I have never 
retraced my steps—have never felt the chill of doubt 
returning upon me; and now I can sit down without 
fear in the serene sunlight of my love for you—a love 
which is the crowning point of all my efforts, for 


which all my other loves seem to have educated and 





prepared me—a love which is, as it were, only the 
development and accomplishment of myself. Look 
back kindly with me, dear Ernest, on all which has 
served to prove and try me, rejoice with me that I 
have been so taught, rejoice with me still more that I 
have been so richly rewarded. I would that heart 
and life were worthier, for both are yours. 


ETHEL. 


LETTER SEVENTH. 


I come again and again unto you, true heart, as the 
bird flies back to its mate, and in writing to you of 
myself, I seem not so much a selfish egotist as a 
willing recorder of that which you please me by 
setting so high a value upon, You tell me what you 
find in me now; you recount my “capabilities for 
greatness,’ as you call them; you describe my many 
peculiarities quite as minutely and faithfully as I 
could do, only you always throw a beautiful rosy veil | 
over these last, while I should often drag them piti- 
lessly out into the sunshine and make them show 
themselves anything but charming. But, though you 
know me so well in the present and can prognosticate 
wisely for the future, the past does not thereby become 
unmeaning for you, nor its incidents fail to increase 
the light thrown upon my character and habits. So I 


have gone on from one reminiscence to another, pleas- 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 149 


ing myself, and, I trust, not wearying you. It has 
indeed been pleasant to me to revisit the old scenes of 
my life; and though my letters have jotted down so 
many of my recollections, yet my thoughts have by 
no means stopped short where my pen has. A thou- 
sand little things, too small and unimportant in them- 
selves to be worth the labor of my writing or of your 
reading, but which nevertheless have retained enough 
vitality and individuality to prevent them from fall- 
ing into oblivion, have taken occasion to present 
themselves before me, just as the rabble follow at the 
heels of the great man and manage to obtain footing 
when the doors are opened to allow his entrance. 
Words and deeds have returned to me since I com- 
menced my little history, that would seem to have 
been of no value or meaning except at the very 
moment of utterance; and persons who flitted in the 
most transient manner across my life, when that life 
was most various and full of external changes, come 
smiling and bowing or frowning upon me as they 
present themselves under shelter of some reference to 


the past. 


150 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


I should probably never have really unearthed the 
past but for your expressed wish, but now that I 
have been busy in the process I find it strangely 
charming. The incidents of each life may be trivial 
and common-place enough, viewed simply as incidents, - 
but set in the stronger light of their interior meaning 
to the soul of the individual, they grow into some- 
thing of more importance and become worthy of the 
study of the person to whom they belong. It is by 
looking back that we learn to look . forward, for, 
having studied ourselves in the past, we are able, 
upon the knowledge thus acquired, to give definite- 
ness to our ideas of the future; becoming familiar 
with our own aspect in the events which have filled _ 
up the by-gone days, we can, by simple transposition, 
in time, determine how we may be affected in the 
future. And, although we may find much to help 
us forward, by seeing how much we have already 
advanced, still self-study in the past is, in the main, 
a somewhat saddening occupation. We see so many 
instances wherein we might have acted more wisely, 


or more kindly, or more truly. We see how small 


Ethel’s Love-Life. . 1§1 


the groundwork of our most violent prejudices and 
prepossessions really was, and wonder how they could 
have hurried us into such extravagance of action. 
You must often have noticed how impossible it is, 
after a night of sound sleep, to retain the same 
degree of violence and excitement upon a matter, 
which seemed, the night before, to be perfectly legiti- 
mate, and only proportionate to the demand of the 
oceasion. And this becomes ten-fold more manifest 
when not only a night, but years, have passed since 
the occurrence of that which, when new and fresh, 
moved us in the very depths of our being. It is 
fortunate that this is the case, for we could never bear 
the fearful strain upon our natures which would ensue 
upon a greater steadfastness of emotion. If the 
recollection of an excitement restored the excitement. 
itself in its pristine force, we should be for ever sway- 
ing in the blasts of passion. 

It is amusing, in looking back over a young girl’s 
life, to see what a large proportion of its movement 
comes trom the presence of love in its various mani- 


festations. It seems actually to be the very Master 


152 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


of Ceremonies, and to determine all the social eti- 
quette and all the machinery by which the connection 
with the world at large is maintained. The homage 
of those to whom a woman remains personally indif- 
ferent has some positive influence upon her develop- 
ment; the love which, though she does not respond 
to it, yet which wins her respect and esteem, has still 
more; and when the crowning sentiment of her life, 
the absorbing and delicious reality of love, comes, 
then she is placed beneath a formative influence 
indeed. Much of a woman’s character may be learned 
only from knowledge of the men she attracts about 
her, and from the manner in which she comports her- 
self towards them. It is by the active antagonisms or 
attractions which enter into her sphere from this 
source that she obtains some little amount of know- 
ledge of the world and some insight into character, 
which, from the sheltered position assigned to her 
sex, she has lamentably small opportunities for acquir- 
ing in other ways. While a boy is thrown at once 
into the arena, and allowed to look about him and 


prepare himself for the conflict of his life by the con- 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 153 


templation of his battle-field, and the study of warfare 
by seeing it before his very eyes, girls are still shut 
up in the secluded unconsciousness of their homes, 
and see human life and human passion only as its 
manifestation bears upon their own personal exist- 
ence. The opportunities for studying character come 
in isolated instances, and it is only when they 
embrace strongly contrastive natures that her oppor- 
tunities are at all commensurate with her needs. 

In the less serious aspect of her life, in the merely 
social career which she pursues as her young lady- 
hood progresses, this love-element is also of prominent 
importance and it needs not that she bevery senti- 
mental or that she be coquettishly inclined, for it to 
produce very positive and inevitable results upon her. 
Her manner unconsciously moulds itself into greater 
self-possession, her energies come forth to sustain her, 
and she walks with a step quite as maidenly but more 
assured as she finds out her inherent power as a 
woman to influence men who are deeply engaged in 
the work of their own lives, and who, ata first glance, 


would seem to be altogether too much absorbed in 


1 bs 


1 54, Ethel’s Love-Life. 


that work to be turned aside by any but the most 
powerful influences. It is only in shallow natures 
that much devotion from men produces silly vanity ; 
when the tone of character is pure and high, the effect 
is elevating, and women become more and more 
worthy of the sentiments they call forth, and it is no 
shame to the most true-hearted man to yield to the 
charm which such women exercise. No woman of a 
strong, true nature can listen to the earnest and honest 
utterance of a manly love, without rising higher than 
all womanly vanity, and finding within herself the 
power to console and to encourage even while she 
steadfastly denies; and such a woman may almost 
always, in time, exchange the impassioned and disap- 
pointed lover for a firm and admiring friend. Women 
almost invariably regard their discarded lovers with a 
degree of kindly liking, and are keen to discern and 
remark upon any noble traits of character in them: 
and even if this comes from no loftier motive than 
a reversionary self-admiration, it is good so far as it 
extends, and often helps to heal the wounds of the 
past. The fact that most of the supposed eternal 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 155 


attachments of young hearts have really a singularly 
brief existence, does not necessarily divest them of all 
their dignity while they are still alive. Itis only a 
merciful arrangement for the relief of the general 
wear and tear of the human heart. This is generally 
well enough understood by women, and they are 
frankly glad to see a man they cannot love meet with 
a heartier recognition from some other woman. I 
have known the greatest friendliness arise among the 
three concerned in one of these little dramas. 9~—-— 

Much of this long chapter upon love has been sug- 
gested to me, dear Ernest, by the pleasant tidings I 
have received from Grahame Elliott, of his rapturous 
happiness in his newly wedded life. I have never 
told you what a frantic’ little lover of my own he once 
was, but now that he is in a position to smile as freely 
at his past extravagances as I myself am, I will give 
you a little outline of the episode. It was not a very 
long, but a most violent and extraordinary one. It 
is only a year ago that the poor fellow actually 
thought himself dying of love for me, and felt himself 


bitterly aggrieved when I refused to believe in his 


156 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


approaching end. Our acquaintance commenced 
during my visit at L., which you remember. He was 
a student in the office of my host, and being the 
orphan son of an old friend, was received as a resident 
in the house, so that, although my visit there lasted 
but a month, we were thrown very much together. 
As I, intrenched in the majesty of my one-and-twenty 
years, first looked upon the pale and delicate youth 
of twenty, I felt an almost motherly impulse of Ixind- 
ness steal over my heart, for I knew that he was alone 
in the world. As our acquaintance progressed, and 
I found his intellect was that of a full-grown man, I 
learned a little more deferential feeling for him, but 
still felt myself to be in a very safe degree of seniority 
to him. We studied German together, a language of 
which we were both extremely fond, and really our 
progress in it was marvellous for the length of time 
we devoted to it. He read aloud the impassioned 
verses of our favorite authors, till he caught the infec- 
tion, and fell to making poems for himself—which, 
at first, I supposed from simple courtesy to his fel- 


low-student, he addressed to me. I hardly noticed 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 157 


that his strains grew more and more intense as they 
grew more and more personal to their object. I did 
not even apply to myself a charming little poem 
he one day brought me, which contained the most 
exquisite history of an intimacy like our own, and of 
which the denouement, though left in uncertainty, 
was suggested with delicate and timid entreaty for my 
indulgence. I frankly admired the poem, and even 
praised the poetic skill with which he had rescued 
himself and his hero from the ordinary and stereo- 
typed conclusions of such romances. I saw him 
change color and look at me with a very peculiar 
expression; but so much had I deceived myself in 
the beginning, by the simple misunderstanding of a 
remark of his own, prophetic of an unsuccessful love 
he declared himself doomed to suffer from, that I 
believed the love to have been in existence before my 
coming, and interpreted every subsequent reference 
to it in accordance with my self-created theory of the 
matter. So I continued my pleasant intercourse with 
him, never dreaming of the result which followed, and 


believing that, although the world was ignorant of 


158 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


the tie which united me to you, yet that my manner 
and my indifference to society were sufficient indi- 
cations that my heart had already found satisfaction 
for its needs. I must do myself the justice to say, 
that even in the moment of Grahame’s most uncon- 
trollable excitement, he acknowledged.that my manner 
had always warned him of this, but that he had 
refused to heed its warning, and had remained wil- 
fully blind to many things that he knew were sufii- 
cient to prove the impossibility of success in his suit. 
At last, a short time before the day appointed for my 
leaving L., as we sat upon the piazza one charming 
moonlight evening, and I was vainly endeavoring to 
keep my thoughts—which would wander off after you, 
wondering what your own occupation might just then 
be—upon the subject of conversation between us, so 
as to pay him a proper degree of attention when he 
spoke,—he suddenly broke off in the middle of a 
poem he was reciting and commenced a most impas- 
sioned declaration of love to myself. His words came 
so impetuously that I could not stop their utterance, 


and when at last he actually threw himself upon his 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 159 


knees before me, and seized my hand in the manner 
of the knights in the German stories we had been read- 
ing, my first idea was that the scene was superlatively 
ludicrous. 

But as he went on, and his first passionate outburst 
subsided into a»more simple though hardly less 
violent language, I saw that it was no high-flown 
romance, but a most unfortunate fact. When he 
would let me speak, I strove, first of all, to calm his 
agitation and to lessen his excitement. But it wasa 
long while before I could soothe him into a condition 
to hear reason. He swore that he would win me or 
die, and threw out violent menaces against some 
imaginary individual whom he called his rival. He 
was sure of winning me by his faithful and great love, 
he said, if only I would not send him away for ever, 
and would say that I- was not bound irrevocably to 
any other. He would go away at once, if I said that 
he must; would gain fame and wealth somewhere and 
‘somehow,—he should be sure of doing so if only he 
might seek them for my sake,—and he would come 


back to lay them and himself at my feet, even though 


160 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


years must pass in absence and solitary effort. All 
this was poured forth with the vehemence and poetry 
natural to an intellectual and impetuous boy, and 
when I strove to bear with him as such, and waited 
patiently for the violence of the’storm to wear itself 
out, he reproached me for looking upon him asa boy, 
when he was, as I ought well'to know, a man in all 
but years and hardness of nature. My patience, 
however, at length received its reward, and he sat 
down upon the low step on which he had been kneel- 
ing, and with a somewhat subdued manner, begged 
me to tell him what his fate must be, but to be very 
gentle in the telling, if there was to be no hope for 
him even in the remote future. So I told him that ~ 
there was no hope, and tried to make him see the 
absurdity of his wish, dwelling upon my superior age, 
and exaggerating it as much as possible, by asserting 
that though but a twelvemonth in point of fact, it 
was, as existing between him and me, ten-fold greater, 
since he knew nothing of the world, and I had lived 
for years in its experiences. All this, however, had 


no effect, nor could I paint the hopelessness of any 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 161 


practical result to his devotion, before the lapse of 
years should place him fairly among men, and give 
him a right to woo a woman as his wife, with sufficient 
power to chill the ardor of his hopes and subdue his 
ambitious fancies to any degree of possible accom- 
plishment. At last, despairing of success in any 
other way, I told him that I loved and was betrothed 
to another, long before I had seen him; and that if he 
had not been absorbed in his own romantic fancies, he 
must have seen innumerable indications of the fact in 
my speech and manner—for though I sought no pub- 
licity, yet I shrank from no simple and _ honest 
acknowledgment, in my domestic and friendly rela- 
tions. AsI went on he grew calmer and more reason- 
able, though he trembled visibly, and looked so very 
wretched that my heart was full of pity for him, even 
while my experience told me that his suffering would 
be more transient than he could then believe possible. 
I spoke very kindly, even affectionately to him, and 
in one or two subsequent interviews, did my best to 
console him, and reconcile him to the life which he 


declared ‘ntolerable to him. My efforts were not very 


162 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


successful, however, and I left him in a state of 
apparent despair. He wrote me several impassioned 
letters, afterwards, and even came to see me two or 
three months later ;—I treated him as I would have 
done a sick child who needed only to be kindly cared 
for, to get well of himself. Some four months ago I 
had a letter from him, written in a much more cheer- 
ful strain, in which he gave me most eloquent thanks 
for my long forbearance with him, declared himself 
more than ever persuaded that the world did not con- 
tain another woman comparable to myself, but avow- 
ing that he was doing his best to conquer a passion 
that he knew to be hopeless. I replied to this letter 
—I had left all his others unanswered—and told him 
that the conclusion of his letter gave me the most 
heartfelt pleasure, and that I hazarded a prophecy 
that the future had in store for him, greater happiness 
than any he had yet dreamed of. My prophecy has 
already proved a true one, for I received yesterday, a 
half dozen sheets from him, filled with the story of his 
new love, its successful wooing and rapid consumma- 


tion. He had been married three days to ‘‘a woman, 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 163 


or rather a child, of sixteen, not as yet like the peer: 
~ less Ethel, but in time I trust to grow somewhat like 
her, if I read the promise in her charming face aright.” 
This last act of homage to myself was very gracefully 
done, was it not? and were I less willing than I am, 
to abdicate the throne of such a sovereignty, it might 
help to reconcile me to my fate. He is an honest- 
hearted fellow with all his rash impulsiveness, and I 
doubt not will remain loyal to his new love, for, from 
all I can learn, it is likely to be the real love of his 
life. He will bring her to see me in a few days, 
having, as he tells me, honestly laid before her the 
story of his first love and all its extravagant manifes- 
tations. I fancy that in addition to his wish, that two 
women whom he values should meet, he is not averse 
to the opportunity it will afford him, of proving to 
his pretty little wife, that the old love was really 
‘off’ before he was “on with the new,” and in that 
belief I shall do my utmost to assist him in dispelling 
every suspicion of jealousy which may arise in his 
wife’s mind, and which the shortness of her own 


acquaintance with him would render quite natural in 


164 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


her. And thus ends, as all such romances should 
end, the episode of Grahame Ellot and Ethel Suther- 
land, which I relate for your edification and amuse- 
ment. It shall not lead me any longer ramble into 
the tangled wild-wood of romance, or entail upon you 
just now, any more of the minor “affaires du coeur,” 
which have sprung up into mushroom existence along 
my path, as they do in that of most women who move 
much in society, and are not positively incapacitated 
from influencing those who are brought into relation- 
ship with them. These experiences, transient as they 
are, and without any very marked results, have yet 
some effect upon the character of both parties, and 
may be made of service in self-study. Our inter- 
course with others becomes, of necessity, of some 
importance to us, the moment it passes beyond the 
bounds of ordinary conventionality ; and it is for this 
reason that even the most transitory connection 
between persons who are brought into intimate per- 
sonal relations which reveal the real nature clearly, 
often assumes proportions grander than our ordinary 


acquaintanceships ever attain to. We all know how 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 165 


fast friendship developes out of acquaintance under 
the influence of isolation from the outside world, how 
readily the heart reveals itself to any one who has 
gained our confidence ever so recently, if the times 
and seasons of communion are undisturbed by jarring 
interruptions. Even the external environments aid 
or restrain the growth of friendship, and that which 
strengthens and expands in summer rambles and 
twilight loneliness might never have found expression, 
—if hedged in by the formalities of social etiquette. 
The true man who stands before a woman with an 
honest love for her in his heart, seldom fails to utter 
words worthy of a manly nature. If there be any 
latent strength or beauty in him, it is transfigured in 
the light of his sentiment; he is lifted by it above 
the ordinary restraint of personality, and lays aside 
the rigid rules which regulate his expressional nature 
before the world. He has a right to speak and to be 
heard—he assumes, for the time, an entirely different 
position in regard to the object of his love from that 
which prevails in the daily atmosphere of social 


intercourse. 


166 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


You see, dear Ernest, that in these days of qu.et 
which surround me now, my mind wanders about in 
all directions, swayed only by the caprice of the 
moment. ‘There is a certain fascination for me in fol- 
lowing out any train of thought which suggests itself, 
no matter whether or not it appear very well worth 
attention in the beginning. I rest my mind in this 
way, after a season of close study and concentrated 
thought, just as I rest my body by a walk, after a 
long seclusion within-doors. In these rambles I pick 
up at random whatever catches my eye at the instant, 
it may be nothing better than a blade of grass, or it 
may be a fair flower worth examination,—a pebble 
from the wayside, or a gem hidden beneath a rough 
exterior. I return home laden with my spoils, and 
in my letters I spread them all out before you, recall- 
ing, by their aid, all the little incidents of my walks, 
all the thoughts that have been suggested by them. 
You will not scorn them because they are so often of 
little worth, but find some value in them all as 
expressions of myself. It is a delight to me to find 


in myself such freedom of utterance towards you, to 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 167 


feel no hesitation in expressing the most passing 
thought, no fear as to your sympathy and interest. 
To you as to my own heart I come, and always find 
you ready to listen and to respond. More than all, 
you give to me the same full confidence in return, and 
when I find such deep enjoyment in the smallest 
fragment of your daily thought, I am sure that you 
are also glad to know of mine. How fast we learn 
to know each other in our heart of hearts! How full 
of pleasure does the future seem in the light of this 
knowledge! Every day brings new confirmation and 
new increase to our love. We shall grow stronger 
and stronger in this atmosphere of serene trust, and 
learn to fear nothing in the future, for we are one for 
time and for eternity. Your own 


ETHEL. 


LETTER EIGHTH. 


My own beloved, I am still dizzy with the excitement 
and hurry of your visit, and the confused sorrow at 
your departure. I ask myself, again and again, if you 
have really been with me, if I have seen you, and, 
above all, if I have in truth had strength to bid you 
farewell for such a long and weary time. I could 
doubt it all with pleasure, and bring myself to a half- 
persuasion of its falsehood, did not an ever-present 
loneliness oppress me with its leaden weight. I can- 
not shake it off even in my sleep, it makes my slum- 
ber feverish and my waking like the rousing from 
some distressing dream. I have striven, from the 
first, against the depression that assails me, sure that 
you wish me to be strong and hopeful in this trial- 
time of our love. I say over to myself all the 
precious words of strength that you whispered to my 


dull ears in those last hours that we spent together. 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 169 


I wear that tiny note of farewell that reached me 
after you yourself were gone, as an amulet, next my 
heart till it seems to hush its throbbings and grow more 
and more calm. I see, whenever I close my eyes, 
the picture of a steamer parting from the land while 
eager hands stretch out to it in vain. I watch the 
crowd upon its deck, and single out one form that 
towers high above the rest, one face that looks steadily 
upon the shore, and seems to know that the poor 
shrinking, weeping woman standing there, is murmur- 
ing blessings on him as he goes. The sunshine 
gleams upon the gladsome waters, the vessel rides 
proudly over the waves, the people who came to gaze 
idly upon her departure go away one by one, till none 
are left but her who sends forth her heart in one long 
last look, as the huge steamer melts away to a mere 
speck in the distance. Where shall she find strength 
and patience for the coming days? Alas, she sees no 
brightness in the sunshine, no beauty in the sea. 
Forgive her for a little while; though she faint in the 
outset she will prove herself, by-and-by, not all a 


coward. 


170 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


I have retraced, step by step, that last walk we took 
together, and lived over again all that we said and did 
in that last day. Sometimes I close my eyes that I 
may fancy you still sitting in the arm-chair, or stand- 
ing by the western window, where you and I haye 
stood so often. I almost hear your last words, through 
the hush of twilight, as I sit alone and think of you. 
I thought, when you were indeed with me, and we 
looked forward into the desolate waste of absenee, 
- that I realized all that was involved in that sad fare- 
well; but now that you are gone, I seem to have just 
learned its meaning. Now that I think of the 
lengthening miles between us, I see all the threat- 
ening possibilities that may arise in our separation. 
Were it not for the deep and fervent faith I have in 
our love, as a reality for all eternity, and in its immor- 
tal essence raised above the reach of time, I should be 
bowed to the dust at thought of these months that 
must grow up between us. You were absent from 
me before, to be sure, but then you were not far 
awa’ ; when the length of the journey between us 


could be reckoned by hours, you seemed not hope- 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 171 


lessly removed, but now that hours have expanded 
into days, and miles are counted by thousands, I do 
indeed feel bitterly alone. There was so little time 
for preparation after your decision was made, that I 
lost all power of making allowance for the length of 
time so generously given you before action was neces- 
sary. While a matter remains vibrating in uncer- 
tainty it is nearly impossible to regard it as it will 
appear when it is settled in permanency, or to pur- 
sue the trains of thought which will follow inevita- 
bly upon its conclusion. So, although the prophecy 
of your going was in my mind, and the dread of 
it in my heart, I did not really grasp the idea of 
absence, of distance, and of withdrawal, until the 
words were spoken which rendered it at last an indis- 
putable fact. Your letter, therefore, announeing your 
decision, came upon me with almost the suddenness it 
would have possessed, had I never heard of the plan: 
yet I had known and written and thought so much of 
it that I fancied myself familiar with its every aspect. 
All the while, however, I had left out the living soul 


which should give vitality to the dry and senseless 


172 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


form, had never dared to place your own actual self 
in the midst of all this array of circumstances that I 
was contemplating with such attention. Every little 
detail was carefully enough planned in my imagin- 
ation, all the movements of some unnamed individual 
were mapped out; but it was not you, not my own 
beloved Ernest, that was to go forth alone and leave 
me. Therefore all my elaborate imaginings were 
useless, my preparations of no avail; I was found 
shelterless and bewildered when the storm fell on me. 
To have but one week together was a very niggard 
gift of fortune, and yet I fear that the courage I had 
nerved myself to show would have broken down 
utterly if [ had been obliged to stand longer face to 
face with a sorrow ever close at hand. I was spared 
the shame of distressing you by unworthy weakness, 
I spoke no retaining word which might have made 
you hesitate to go forward; thank Heaven, I was 
even able to say a worthier and less selfish utterance 
at the last. How should I now take shame upon 
myself had I weakly yielded to my fears, and urged 


you to leave undone a work so noble, and for which 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 173 


so few are fitted! I stand erect in the knowledge of 
my love for you, and it is tested more by this trial of 
my strength than most loves are in a long and equable 
lifetime. The privilege, though a sad one, is a glori- 
ous one, and through all my first prostration and 
all my subsequent depression, I have felt a secret 
pride at being able to prove to you that even in the 
power of endurance and forgetfulness of self, I may 
stand by your side, my noble lover. 

If good wishes may have any genial power on the 
elements, or any ameliorating effect upon obstacles, 
your path over the deep must have been unbroken 
sunshine, your progress in your errand will be one 
unmingled triumph. You won many hearts in that 
little week here, and from them all you have a kindly 
Godspeed on your journey. I find on all sides of 
my daily life a quicker, readier sympathy than ever, 
since you have been amongst us, and have become 
for others a reality instead of a faith. You are one 
of those who, almost at first sight, iidividualize the 
impressions that they make upon others; you never 


merge yourself in the crowd, but, once seen, once 


1 74 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


heard, you are known and remembered. After this 
first moment, everything you do helps to deepen and 
confirm the impression, and I am surprised to see 
how clearly you define yourself in social intercourse, 
without appearing too self-conscious, without seeming 
to put others aside in the least. It is an inherent 
quality in some persons, and is quite unattainable by 
those who do not possess it by nature; it is as distinct 
from vanity and forwardness, as it is from diffidence 
and self-distrust. In a man, especially, it is a gift 
for which he may be very grateful, and to one called 
out to take an active part in the world’s work, needed 
to influence others and to go straight to their hearts, 
it is most invaluable.. Your serenity in yourself, and 
the quiet certainty of your speech and manner, carry 
conviction to many minds to whom any self-originated 
certainty is unattainable, and who require that, as 
each separate subject comes before them, it should 
he decided for them by some other and stronger 
mind. The self-reliance that you have is a glorious 
gift; your intuitions never fail, and the time that so 


many need to spend upon the preliminaries of any 


Ethel’s Love-Life. | Lys 


great work, is at your disposal for the work itself. 
You seem to others strangely at ease when they are 
discomposed and undecided beneath the influence of 
contradictory demands, simply because, from the first, 
you are prepared to act upon a decision which comes 
to you simultaneously with the question itself. There 
are a great many matters upon which it is customary 
for a man to deliberate, and take credit to himself 
for his deliberation, upon which quick decision and 
prompt action would be far higher and nobler. The 
true and keen insight of an uncompromising spirit 
cuts the Gordian knot of circumstances and doubts 
and uncertainties, and sees but two clear and distinct 
aspects—the right and the wrong. This world needs 
a score or two of such clear-headed men as yourself, 
in each hemisphere, to cut short the long discussions 
of the time, and substitute for them the simple 
‘principles which they cover up and obscure, till 
the crowd forgets that there is any principle at all 
involved, and looks eagerly upon some issue quite 
aside from the original question. The man who has 


the gift from Heaven to speak from his own heart 


) 176 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


straight to the hearts of others, is responsible for 
every word he utters, and needs not only quickness 
of intuition, that no time may be lost, but also an 
interior calmness which shall balance and direct his 
promptest action. 

I fully participate in all the hopes that brighten 
your path, and share the satisfaction you cannot but 
feel in the greatness of the work to which you are 
called. Help me, henceforth, to lay aside all the 
selfish egotism of my love, and to rise to a higher 
plane, from which I may see all connected with you 
in the light of your duty and in the greatness of 
your power of accomplishment. Help me to put off 
all personal fear and all distrust that may arise in my 
woman’s weakness. I would that my love should be 
ever your solace and delight, never your weakness or 
_ your restraint. The strength that you impart to me 
I would, in some small measure, give to you, through 
other avenues and in other seasons of need,—the 
sympathy with which you ever gladden my heart I 
would make a perennial fountain, at which you may 


always find wherewith to slake your thirst. 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 177 


I long for your first letter, Hrnest,—it will put the 
seal upon my certainty of your absence. IL trace over 
the letters of your foreign address with a kind of 
dreamy wonder, until it becomes a sort of hieroglyphic 
inscription to me. Alas! the meaning of it always 
returns to me and speaks of distance and of peril. 
Thanks to the magic of the pen, we can still approach 
each other, and count the peevines of each other’s 
hearts. When I sit in my little room with all sights 
and sounds shut out, [am with you, from the moment 
that I take my pen; my thoughts flow forth fast and 
without reserve, and I seem to catch the response of 
yours, as if no distance intervened between. I can 
utter on paper, too, many words of love that rush to 
my heart, that my lips might refuse to form if your 
passionate look were on me, and your eager ear were 
bent to listen. I cannot always speak the thoughts 
of which my heart is full, nor put into clear utterance 
the emotions that thrill me with their power. You 
know: that you sometimes see me apparently cold, 
just when you are sure that I am, in reality, most 


moved, and that I seek to shelter myself from the 
g* 


178 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


violence of my emotions by silent repression of their 
utterance. -I rejoice that you are keener of sight than 
most of those who surround me,—that you know that 
I do this as a protection against my own self, not as a 
guard against others, and that often my only safety 
against the most passionate outbreak of. feeling, is in 
the impassible manner with which I cover up the 
first movement of the inner flood. I would not have 
you think me really cold, as others do, and it is well 
that between us there have been peculiar influences, 
strong enough to break down every barrier of heart- 
reserve, and to reveal me, almost in spite of myself, 
as the organization of fire and flame that I really am. 
You do not regret that to the world outside I seem — 
but ice beneath a powerless sun. It is strange how 
easily the world is deceived in such matters, and how 
readily it accepts any representation of yourself that 
you may voluntarily or involuntarily present to it, 
and how faithfully it adheres to the first picture, 
even when you are continually contradicting it by 
subsequent ones. Once establish yourself before the 


little circle which for you represents the world, either 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 179 


as cold or sympathetic, frank or reserved, and you 
may stand upon that ground and win praise or blame 
accordingly, with little actual confirmation from your- 
self of the awarded judgment. Even in our deeper 
experiences, the semblance often exists long after the 
insufficient reality is gone, and-habit has power to 
retain us in observance of much that has ceased to 
possess any inner power of its own over us. How 
many act upon the supposition of continued love, 
long after a positive mdifference has usurped its place! 
How many tremble at imagined coldness when that: 
coldness has changed gradually into ever-growing 
love; how many continue to entrust confidences long 
after the first faith, which prompted and inspired 
them, has grown weak and useless! A part of this 
is doubtless owing to the shame one feels at acknow- 
ledging the fickleness implied in change; it is like 
giving the lie ta one’s own heart to confess that what 
was once of priceless worth to us, has ceased to have 
any value for us, or that what we once cast aside as 
valueless, has insinuated itself into our inmost hearts. 


To question the reality of the past seems tq attack 


180 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


the possibilities of the future; to give up our hold-on 
the old feeling is to cast a doubt upon the duration of 
all future emotions; to acknowledge present vibration 
implies the chance of never-ending vacillation. We 
go on, therefore, striving to seem the same even to 
ourselves, when everything in us has changed—we 
play at summer when there is winter in our hearts, or 
shiver and pretend that we are chilled, when every 
leaf and bud in our being is longing to burst into 
full life. Sometimes this process is no impeachment 
to our honesty, for it is mainly involuntary and 
inevitable—the change comes on so gradually that we 
do not perceive what we are doing, and are not aware 
that a new feeling has crossed our threshold until we 
discover it enthroned in the highest place within. 
This is especially true in regard to a growing love, 
which sometimes has birth amid a crowd of preju- 
dices and antagonistic circumstances, so adverse to it 
that its advent seems impossible. But love scorns 
antagonisms, it delights in contradictions and incon- 
sistencies, it has a sweet logic of its own, by which 


it makes all things which happen quite reasonable, 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 181 


and persuades us that those attachments which 
nobody could have expected, are, after all, the most 
simply natural things in the world. 

I cheat myself into transient forgetfulness of the 
present by these unconnected thoughts, dear Ernest, 
and bring you nearer to me by indulgence of their 
expression to you. I seem to wait for your reply 
after each new sentence, and I know you now so well 
that I can prophesy your answer with such certainty, 
that I am continually incited to new questionings, if 
only that I may have the delight of replying to them 
in your name. ‘The external life flows on for me just 
now so noiselessly, that it does not take me out of 
myself, but leaves me ample time for undisturbed 
communion with you, in the poor insufficient way 
possible through letters, which are, by turns, the most 
charming or the most provoking things in the world; 
the most charming when they offer themselves as 
messengers of burning thoughts which are debarred 
all other mode of expression, the most provoking 
when, their first fresh glory faded, they bring the 


after thought of their insufficiency as conveyances for 


182 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


the ever-changing moods and fancies of the heart that 
longs to lay.its whole self before another. 

The short, dull days of Winter are upon us, the 
long nights close around us with a tightening grasp. 
I do not love winter, for it shuts up the bounteous 
hand of Nature, and chills my heart till it grows sick 
and weary with longing for the flowers and the 
sunshine. I wish for the freedom and expansiveness 
of summer, and pine for the sweet influences of 
warmth and freshness. This winter I shall, however, 
lead a life comparatively independent of the season. 
I set apart a certain portion of each day for exercise, 
—not a large portion, for I am still indolent in that 
respect, spite of all your good advice. The rest of 
the time I abandon myself altogether to the sway of 
inner influences, and surround myself with a magic 
circle, within whose precincts few practicabilities dare 
enter. This arrangement is not only in accordance 
with my inclination, but is, to some extent, a necessity, 
for although I find my health slowly and surely rées- 
tablishing itself, 1 am not yet strong enough for long- 


continued exertion, and do not forget your oft. 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 183 


repeated cautions against imprudence. I learn to be 
very docile beneath the loving restraints of those 
about me in this matter, for I think of the terrible 
suffering and anxiety I should subject you to, were I 
to be ill while you are away. Therefore I lay aside 
the more active duties of society, and content myself 
with more quiet occupations. I resign to Claudia the 
discharge of all my outside charities, and with so faith- 
ful an almoner, am willing to devote myself for 
awhile to more selfish enjoyment. You shall see with 
how much profit to myself I shall spend these winter 
months in study and in thought. My life, which was 
so long swayed by changing impulses from without 
and from within, has learned, ere this, to steady itself 
into greater concentration. I, who once wandered 
hither and thither as the mood suggested, have 
learned to make each successive mood help on the 
general movement. My external life, once so full of 
change and excitement, has, since I have known you, 
calmed itself into repose and afforded me the oppor- 
tunity I needed for ascertaining my own powers and 


for giving them some assured direction. I am still 


184 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


busy at the work, still striving to attain, and therefore 
quiet hours.are needful for me. While waiting for 
you I must not be idle, but as you have for a time 
left far behind your native land and home and friends, 
so would I also leave all past restraint and press on 
to a new land of effort and of labor. 

I would there were new words in which to clothe 
my love and trust in you, beloved—the old are all I 
have to utter. They strive in vain to say all that is 
in my heart, and to convey my soul’s longings to you. 
Were it not that love transfigures them into greatness, 
it were useless to speak them; were it not that time 
hallows and intensifies them, they were indeed worn 
out; were it not that you know all that they fail to 
say, silence were better than words, but now each 
syllable is rich with meaning from my heart to 
yours— 


‘“ 


ETHEL, 


LETTER NINTH. 


My heart yearns after you, my own beloved wanderer, 
and follows step by step the path you are taking over 
such wide earth-spaces. With one effort of my 
thought, and in one moment of time, I come 
where it has taken you weeks to arrive by the slower 
methods of ordinary travelling, so much faster and 
less encumbered is the movement of the heart when 
it is impelled to go forth upon long journeys. But 
my return is as rapid as my going, and just as I am 
settling myself fairly into the belief that Iam with you 
and that you are about to speak to me, something, 
pertaining to the immediate present, starts up to 
assure me that I am still at home and you are still 
away, and that the distance between us is really none 
the less because I have spanned it, for a moment, with 


a pretty dream-bridge strong enough to transport a 


186 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


host of pleasant fancies over, but not sufficient for any 
more substantial purpose. Then I revert to your 
delicious letters, which come to me all breathing with 
love, all palpitating with strong, fresh life. I read 
them so many times over, that not only does every 
word in them become familiar, but I am able to enjoy 
them in a great variety of ways, and after having fed 
my heart with their loving meaning, I find another 
satisfaction in their intrinsic beauty, and delight my 
intellectual fastidiousness with their brilliant style and 
their clear-cut excellence. Your foreign sketches and 
picturesque descriptions charm me not only as a lover 
but as an artiste. So far as they extend over ground 
familiar to me, they bear the additional charm of asso- 
ciation, and suggest a thousand lively reminiscences 
of my own European experiences; and now that you 
are moving on far out of the range of my personal 
knowledge, I am quite as happy in having all my 
information come through the freshness and piquaney 
of your description. In fact, so well do I see the pic- 
tures which you paint for me, that the actual limit of 


my own travelled line is becoming dangerously dim, 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 187 


and I fear that in some unguarded moment I shall 
actually proclaim myself to have been a traveller 
over many lands, whereon I have as yet never set 
my foot. it pleases me to find how very often, in 
going where I have been, you have been attracted 
by those things which interested me the most, and 
impressed with those aspects of the old-world life 
which roused me to the most observing attention, 
but which many travellers either do not see at all, or 
notice only with a careless indifference. I seemed 
once more to walk the crowded streets of Paris, 
when I read your letter written thence — once more 
to study the meaning of those many faces which 
passed by, unconscious of my gaze, and to see in the 
magnificent incarnation of physical and sensational 
existence which Paris, above all cities, presents, a 
problem as unanswerable as it is fascinating. Again 
the ponderous gloom of London weighed me down 
to depression, and the gaunt spectres of its midnight 
beggary and vice affrighted me. Again I floated 
dreamily over the Rhine, and peopled the ruins on 


its banks with mailed knights, and its laughing vine- 


188 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


yards with blushing peasant girls. Again I stood 
hushed beneath the awful grandeur of Mont Blare, 
as the sun came forth to do it reverence after its 
lonely converse with the majesty of darkness; or 
gazed enraptured, as the same sun, grown bolder by 
his long beholding, dared at parting to cast a burning 
glance upon its snowy beauty, that brought a divine 
and rosy blush upon the white brow of the mountain. 
Pictures, and statues, and people, have all passed again 
before me, as your letters call up, one after another, 
the different episodes of my own pleasant travelling 
experience. The separate incidents of travel have 
each a distinct meaning and a different beauty to him 
to whom they belong as personal remembrances, and 
are apt to break up one’s memory of past journeys 
into fragmentary and inharmonious reminiscences, so 
that the narration of them becomes tedious to a 
listener, long before they lose their zest to those to 
whom they have been living realities. But the true 
use and meaning of extensive travel to the individual 
is, not that by it he shall have beheld so many more 


cities and people, and dwelt in so many more climates 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 189 


than others have done, but that, by these experiences, 
he shall have infinitely widened his views of life, 
cultivated his tastes, and increased and made wiser 
his sympathy with humanity at large. The elements 
of the variety he has met should be absorbed into 
his mental and spiritual circulation, to cause a freer 
and heartier and ruddier glow. The different modes 
of his life should be fused into one grand whole, and 
he should develope into a larger-hearted, a more wise, 
more genial, more harmonious, and more serene man; 
not merely into one rich in anecdote and gifted with 
a variety of tongues. The rough points of character 
and disposition should be rounded off into graceful 
proportions by attrition with the world, and a wider 
charity be learned through observation of the innu- 
merable aspects which this human life presents to a 
thoughtful person, the endless involutions of circum- 
stance and temperament, of races and of climates. I’ 
sometimes think a travelled man should be a some- 
what saddened one, for truly this world of ours is no 
easily-read riddle, no childish play-ground, no sum- 


mer dream. The questions, which intercourse with 


190 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


it rouse in the mind, are apt to press heavily in hours 
of thoughtfulness; the scenes of vice and misery, 
and even the pictures of enjoyment and happiness, 
through which it takes us, seem to have a hidden 
meaning, unto which, with all our study, we cannot 
be quite sure we attain. We cannot always resolve 
the clouds into angel-faces, though sure that the 
Great Artist is true to his work. If there be any. 
groundwork of true thoughtfulness in a man’s nature, 
a life of movement must (unless utterly without sea- 
sons of quiet and repose) serve to eliminate it into 
positive manifest existence. 

And you, dear Ernest, are having such glorious 
opportunity for all this cultivation, all this harmoniz- 
ing of your own inner and outer life. Your years of 
study have so prepared you to understand the mean- 
ing of what you see, that you need fear no over accu- 
mulation of facts, which, when heaped up in a less 
cultivated and less philosophic mind, might produce 
a complete and hopeless chaos. Your knowledge of 
your own country enables you to institute compari- 


sons, and to make deductions, which will prevent all 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 191 


one-sidedness of result; and your magnetic force of 
character and wonderful discriminative powers will 
open before you a thousand paths, which to the mere 
external traveller would never be suspected. I see 
in your letters the working of all these forces, and 
you lead me with you through all your wanderings, 
whether they take your external sense through pal- 
pable scenes of life, or entice your imagination into 
labyrinths of speculation.. With you to guide me, I 
am superior to all fatigue; with you to teach me the 
meaning of what I see, I grow wiser than myself, and 
find unceasing interest in each new glimpse of the 
active life in which you mingle, and each new revela- 
tion of the thoughts which visit your mind when 
it withdraws into itself. I hush the piteous wailings 
of my heart when I remember that it is only at the 
cost of absence and separation and distance that all 
this is to be won; but there are times when an inex- 
pressible agony assails me, or when the longing to 
behold you rises into a horror of painfulness, and 
bows me to the very dust with inconsolable wretched- 


ness. Do I not, my best beloved, see traces of a 


192 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


similar yearning in some of the sweet words of your 
last letter? You think it no shame to confess that 
your own great heart grows faint at thought of the 
time and space that intervéne between us. Oh, Ernest, 
you are always noble, always true, always grand | 
For it is, indeed, grand to so embrace within the 
limits of one heart all the noble manliness of unflag- 
ging aspiration, and all the sweet and gentle tender- 
ness of timid, trembling love. You never tremble 
for yourself, nor quail at any danger which threatens 
but yourself, yet you quiver with apprehension at the 
thought of even a rude breath upon my unworthy 
self. ‘Your prayer goes up to heaven on the sweet 
night air, and the tears of loving weakness tremble in 
your eyes just as my woman’s heart lies prostrate in 
its own supplications, and my courage dies away 
within me as I look in vain for you. Only in that 
prayer of utter weakness to the Hclp that never fails, 
can I find returning peace and happiness. In that I 
come forth into the summer region of my love and 
trust; I see you strong and hopeful by my side; I — 


hear your prephecy of safe return; I glow with 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 193 


happy anticipation, and come forth again to resume 
with new energy my daily work. 

Your pleasant and wise plans for occupation Tam 
carrying out with religious faithfulness, and it is to 
them that I owe it that my hours of despondency 
have been comparatively so few. I labor at my 
studies as earnestly as if you saw each page that I 
turn over; I paint my pictures with as eager enthu- 
siasm as if you were to see them before the colors are 
dry, and I walk forth every day with a stride as 
strong and rapid as if I were to meet you somewhere 
on the way. Every book that I open speaks to me 
of you, the perfume left by your cigar grows poetical 
as Araby’s soft airs in the magic light of association, 
your pencil-marks are sweet illuminations of my text, 
a word of comment at the bottom of the page is a 
volume of new meaning to me. Every criticism, 
every suggestion that you have made to me in art, is, 
as it were, engraved upon my memory in golden let- 
ters, and glows and beams upon me as I work. And 
in my walks, I tread in our old footsteps, and every 


moment I hear your voice repeating some pleasant 


194. Ethel’s Love-Life. 


word, or see you smile as the sunlight comes forth 
and lights up some point that you have loved to look 
at with me. J am rich in associations, dearest, and 
have not wholly lost your presence. 

This same power of association, how rich it is and 
over what endless paths of beauty it leads us! Such 
tiny trifles as it makes important, such charming 
meaning as it gives to simplest deeds! The gleam 
of sunlight on the grass, the breath of some common 
flower, the strain of simple music, are fraught with 
deepest significance to the heart to which they speak 
the mystic language of association. Some of the 
most ordinary articles of our daily surroundings are 
glorified into an upper region of sacredness by some 
little memory which clings lovingly to them, as if to 
shield them from desecration, when their more practi- 
cal usefulness is passed. How we treasure up some 
cumbrous and unsightly piece of furniture if a beloved 
form has rested upon it, or find an inner beauty in 
something uncongenial to our natural tastes, if one 
we love has praised or loved it! I strive to associate 


with those I love, those things which have an inherent 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 195 


beauty however, not only from zsthetic instincts, but 
from loving homage to those upon whose shrines I lay 
my twining garlands of association. Though every 
hour of my day brings me some thought of you, more 
or less interior and pervading, yet I have so inter- 
woven my soul with yours in one direction that it can 
never be dissociated therefrom—lI dedicate to you the 
expanse of the western sky as twilight falls over the 
weary earth. It matters not whether that sky be 
glorious with crimson and gold, or gay with mists and 
clouds, whether it be softly luminous with summer’s 
quivering heats or chill and clear with winter's frosts. 
I see it, though the close city streets shut it out from 
my eyes, as I behold it when there is naught between 
me and the horizon’s utmost verge. And you stand 
before me then and I look down deeper and deeper into 
the unfathomable depths of your calm eyes, and seem 
to float at once into your soul and into that far-off 
western realm, to reach the very abode of sunset, as 1 
feel your strong hands holding me, and learn more 
and more that beauty is unity, and that its mission is 


not to the senses, be they ever so delicate, but to the 


196 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


soul, which must respond and lift itself ever higher 
and higher unto the central source of all beauty. The 
perception of beauty grows with our using of it in 
ourselves, and becomes more and more a medium of 
truth, as we listen heedfully and reverently to its 
utterances. As it becomes dearer to us it becomes 
ideal, and from ideality it gains spiritual meaning, 
and from spiritual it passes on to heavenly meaning. 
That is no love of Beauty which the vulgar feel when 
their admiration is called forth, nor when the earthy 
sense is pleased with pleasant sights and sounds—but 
the true sentiment is twin-sister to the religious faith, 
and delights to glorify and adorn its manifestations in 
our human life. In Heaven it may be absorbed into 
our worship, and become inseparable from our soul- 
life. Not in vain has the world built its fair temples 
and rung out its grand anthems and painted its glori- 
ous pictures, any more than it is in vain that God has 
made the whole earth beautiful with trees and flowers, 
with seas and mountains. 

And I strive ever in dim and somewhat uncertain 


wise to mingle my thought of you with ever growing 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 197 


aspiration for myself—to surround your image with 
all that I can feel of loftiest beauty and truthfulness. 
All the other loves and friendships of my life have 
fallen far below the standard I strive to attain unto 
with you. Though some have been helpful to me, 
though some have been ennobling, none have reached 
the elevation to which I mount with you as on the 
wings of the morning. Apart from the deep, passion- 
ate, impulsive love in our hearts, there has been so 
much of spiritual effort, so much of reverent search, 
so much of true soul-companionship, that heart and 
_ life and soul, this world and the next, are all mingled 
in one indissoluble bond. No niggard response have 
you made to my heart, but rather outrun my eager 
demand—no cold forbearance have you granted to the 
earnest questionings of my soul, but rather, joining in 
the search after truth and life, have steadied my trem- 
bling steps and borne me with loving arms over the 
rough and stony places of my soul’s pilgrimage. The 
sorrowful and weary paths, which others have to tread 
alone, have been made merciful by your companionship, 


and now we can never either of us be any more alone. 


198 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


What shall I tell you of myself in these long days 
when I cannot see you? Shall 1 tell you more of the 
old past or content myself with hasty glimpses of 
the present? Shall I paint for you a gallery of por- 
traits of the people by whom I am surrounded, that 
when you come you may already know them, or shall 
I still continue the heroine of my own story, and fill 
up all but the corners of the sheets I send you, with 
continually repeated pictures of myself? You have 
had me already in nearly every possible aspect, every 
variety of light and shade. Do you never grow weary 
of contemplating this face that so pertinaciously places 
itself before you, every lineament of which you must 
ere this be familiar with, and which always looks back 
upon you with an unvarying glance of trusting love ? 
You say that my moods vary, and that although you 
know me to be steadfast, yet you never find me twice 
exactly alike, either in look or manner; but to myself 
I seem, so far as regards you, to be in one unvarying 
attitude, and sometimes dread lest even my earnest 
love may not always be able to redeem that sameness 


from weariness to you. Were it not that when with you 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 199 


I find myself ever moving along with you, and that 
then life seems not only full of sweetness and of love, 
but overflowing with rich variety and delicious 
changes, I should indeed have reason to fear this con- 
stant revolution of my heart about you as its centre. 
But I am glad that you find me various enough, as you 
say you do, for it is your own gift to sway me as you 
will, and I trust never to lose this responsiveness which 
makesmesohappy. ‘To tell the truth, I do not myself 
like those persons who seem unsusceptible to a change 
of mood, and are consequently unsympathetic and 
unresponsive. ‘The faculty of vibration by no means 
implies the necessity of weakness, and because we 
sometimes see the bird sitting motionless upon the 
nest, we do not conclude that he cannot therefore fly 
out into the upper air and wing his way aloft till the 
eye aches with following him. So, though I am still 
and hushed when I brood over my love for you, I 
love to wander hither and thither, wherever the 
whim takes me, in all the other aspects of my life. 
Even in my most ordinary avocations I seek an 


impulse to move me in any particular direction, and 


200 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


am full of method in a most unmethodical way. I do 
with zest and pleasure—not the work which most 
persons would declare appropriate to the times and 
seasons—but that which there is at the moment a will 
within me to do. / The harness of prescribed routine 
galls and wearies me, and the supposed necessity for 
doing a particular thing at a particular moment is 
sometimes enough in itself to render the doing irk 
some. |I have known many persons who, in conse- 
quence of putting this self-imposed yoke upon their 
necks, seemed actually never to do what, at the time, 
they wished to do, for, as the order of nature goes 
calmly on without regard to petty individual plans, 
stupid and prosaic in-door occupations were sure to 
come, upon their chart, just when the loveliest days 
wooed to enjoyment of outside beauty, and their pre- 
scribed seasons for exercise and recreation fell upon 
times of storm and dulness. We are sufficiently 
inured to the general routine of habit to accomplish, 
in the long run, most of the really important matters 
of daily work and conventional needs, without a too 


slavish obedience to that routine developed into wea: 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 201 


risome details of days and hours, and a certain degree of 
freedom and laissez-faire, in regard to them, makes life 
easier and simpler to a degree that few seem to under- 
stand. It always amuses me to see this reverence of me- 
thod in trifles carried into the domain of lofty conscien- 
tiousness, as it is very apt to be by my own sex, and 
to hear the tone of lamentation with which positive 
and easily attained pleasures for themselves, and much 
gratification for those who love them, are put aside, 
because, in the regularly arranged plan of the week, 
the time has arrived for them to attend to something 
which, to put it on its highest possible ground, is a 
mere negative and unimportant virtue. For myself, 
the presence of an individual impulse carries me at 
once half-way over the labor that is to be accom- 
plished, and I have never yet found that the impulse 
failed to appear for each successive need, in season to 
prevent any serious consequences from delay, even 
though I might appear culpably dilatory to those who 
follow closely upon their carefully prescribed routine. 
It is only in those matters, which rise into the higher 


and nobler portions of life, that I feel willing to yield 
Q* 


202 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


an unquestioning obedience at any hour when they 
may call, and in them I recognise, without repug- 
nance, the additional dignity and beauty they receive 
from being harmoniously arranged. Perhaps it is 
only another manifestation of my dominant spirit of 
exclusiveness, which leads me to draw a line between 
the trivial and accidental employments of life and 
those higher and grander duties which, in’ their very 
movement, elevate us and make us more and more 
free, just as I put aside, for a more careless notice, the 
claims of my ordinary and casual acquaintances, and 
think it no harm occasionally to ignore their exist- 
ence, while the inner circle of my friends forms an 
ever-present regulating influence on my every thought 
and deed. Presence and absence become, in this 
light, less stringent, less descriptive terms, for there is 
always present with me a something representative 
of my friend, even when wide distances separate the 
tangible daily life. Some one says, that what we 
really love we really own, and I seem to myself, in 
this sense, to hold complete possession of my 


friends—the concentration of my affection upon a 


Ethel’s Love-Life. < 202 


few seems to bring those few always within my reach; 
one is never crowded out by another, for where the 
guests are few and honored, there is room for all close 
by the host. I have but to stretch forth my hand to 
touch each member of my little household in the man- 
sion into which my friendliness has welcomed them. 
And though they sometimes go away in the body, as 
you are now doing, yet in the spirit they are still 
sitting within the four walls of my little friendship- 
home, and meet me with a smile every morning and 
every evening. 

I send forth a dove over the waste of waters, bearing 
to you allthe best wishes of my heart. She is 
freighted with loving words, almost too sweet to be 
uttered save in the deepest and most private recesses 
of the imagination; the blushing of the dawn is not 
fairer than the tender glances she would bring to you, 
the mid-day glory is not purer than the atmosphere 
of love through which she flies, and the hush of twi- 
light is not holier than the trustful impulse, half 
prayer, and half-acknowledgment, which she bears 


from my very heart itself unto you, Her wing is 


204. Ethel’s Love-Life. 


strong, and she knows her errand, she flies straight 
and fast to you, sure of a welcome, and thrilling her. 
self with the joy that her tidings will bring to your 
own loving heart. Oh, weeks and months that are to 
come! I could almost implore you to leap at once 
into the past, that I might find close at hand the 
coming of my absent one; but I check the wish: 
before it is uttered; I accept the tedious unfolding 
of these passing days, and turn without repining to 
learn the lessons which they would teach. They 
shall not be days of stagnation, hardly days of sad- 
ness, for I will make them ministrant of all good 
influences to you and to myself. God is near to both 
of us, and in Him we are near unto each other. He 
will guide and guard us till we meet again; to Him 
I speak of you, unto Him I trust you, and through 
Him I bless you. 


ETHEL. - 


LETTER TENTH. 


THE days of absence wear slowly away, beloved 
Ernest, and my thought at morning, and my prayer 
at night, begin and end with your beloved name. 
Perhaps I learn to know you even better through 
absence than I could have done in your continued 
presence, for my thoughts dwell upon you now in 
each separate aspect of your life and being, with a 
more unbroken attention than they could possibly 
have done when you were by, to substitute one im- 
pression for another, and to change the direction of 
my thought, even if the object of it remained the 
same. In absence we call up the image of one we 
love, as it appears in the light of some particular 
quality, or as developed in one style of action; it 
stands before us as a statue would do, and we study 


it in all its proportions, make ourselves familiar with 


206 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


every feature, and draw from it a complete and satis 
factory impression; and as time passes, we collect a 
series of these impressions as various as the charac- 
teristics of our friend, and finally obtain, from the 
accumulation of sketches, a perfect picture. But 
when life flows on in the presence of our dear ones, it 
becomes so full of action, that there is no time for 
steady thought; we catch a glimpse, it may be, at 
one moment, of something in character or heart on 
which we would fain dwell with fond attention, but 
soon the current bears us on, and we are both in new 
circumstances, and new qualities become prominent. 
It is not unusual to find members of a family much 
less conversant of the deeper nature of each other, 
than many who stand outside, for the reason that the 
daily life glides on too fast, and usurps, with its 
trivialities, the time which we give to our friends, 
while only those words or those deeds, which express 
the stronger characteristics, are brought into visibility 
for the world at large. Some action or some thought 
put in words, gives to a passing looker-on a more 


sharp-cut outline of a man’s mind or heart, than those, 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 207 


who meet him every day, can form from the too 
numerous and contradictory impressions, which his 
careless daily act or word may give. The best friends 
are apt to lose, in constant intercourse, the perception 
of salient points in each other, and the influence of 
present love is to soften and assimilate much that in 
absence becomes distinct and prominent. You see 
that I strive hard, dear Ernest, to win some com- 
pensation from the hard present, which has put such 
wide and hopeless gulfs of time and distance between 
our daily lives. I am trying to paint your heart and 
soul upon the walls of my inner life, just as I am 
busy with painting the face which is ever before my 
imagination, by the help of memory alone. I have 
covered for a little while the portrait which hangs in 
my room, and I sit down each day at my easel, work- 
ing earnestly, lovingly, and as I think, most success- 
fully, upon another portrait of you, which shall be 
even more faithful than the one I have had so long. 
And as I call up your features and remember how 
you looked at different times when we have been 


together, I also summon up an image of your inner 


208 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


self as it has been set forth in some noble deed or 
generous word; I see your whole soul reveal itself in 
some grand enthusiasm, your heart in the sweet and 
tender beauty of some kindly act. I hardly know 
which picture I prize most, the one that daily grows _ 
beneath my fingers, or that which develops itself 
invisibly to all eyes but my own, and renders beauti- 
ful the inner temple of my heart. I have found more 
delight in these hours thus spent with your imagined 
presence near me, than I thought myself capable of 
feeling when you are really far away. ‘The half- 
finished portrait greets me every morning with a look 
of love; the heart-picture I behold through midnight 
darkness as in noonday light. 

The outward world goes on as ever with its routine 
of daily events, none of which affect especially either 
myself or my environments. The love of others 
makes each day pleasant to me, and I strive to return 
a grateful response to those who seek to make me 
happy, rather than to let the inner loneliness of my 
heart, without you, make me selfishly regardless of 


the claims of others upon me. That were but a poor 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 209 


and miserable love, which narrowed the nature into 
only one channel of expression, and for my own part, 
I find that in loving and working for all who should 
be dear to me, I seem ever to express, under some 
new phase, the love that finds its truest, and happiest, 
and fullest outlet towards yourself. What I do for 
others seems to me not only a pleasant duty towards 
them, but a loving homage to you; and even the 
charities, that call me out of myself to supply the 
needs of others, weave themselves into mystical and 
pleasant connexion with yourself. 

Summer comes on with rapid steps, for which I 
listen almost as lovingly as for your own, my Ernest, 
—perhaps because I trust that I shall hear them both 
together. Your letters tell me that I may hope for 
this—indeed, J fancy I should do so in spite of all 
that might discourage my expectation. I take to 
my heart all the meaning of this forced absence from 
each other, and though it has often made me very 
sad, I trust it has not made me weak. It is difficult 
to realize that what we suffer and enjoy, what we do 


and what we love, are to the heart as the air and the 


210 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


rain, the sunshine and the dew to the plant—that 
their alternation is necessary to the growth of each, 
and that the heart can no more thrive and blossom 
without tears, than the flower without rain. In the 
deep silence of my soul I receive the sadness of my 
lonely hours, and seek to make of them all that they 
are intended to become to me. My heart loves the 
sunshine, and longs for its return, as it yearns for 
your presence, and feels but half itself when out of 
your companionship; but it.will-not, therefore, spend 
itself in weak complaint or idle repining. Go on, 
my own beloved, in your great work; let my prayers 
help you more than my tears restrain you; believe 
that the former are the expression of my higher self, 
the latter the necessary and unhurtful weakness of a 
loving woman’s heart. } 

I think, my Ernest, that as the days go by and I | 
dwell in the holy seclusion of my love for you, I catch 
some faint reflection of your own calmness,—my heart 
learns to regulate more and more its once spasmodic 
impulse, and I grow stronger and more assured with- 


in myself. I do not find my enthusiasms lessen in 


Ethel’s Love-Life. JT 


themselves, but I find myself less hasty in falling into 
new ones—though the old, established ones grow ever 
grander and more absorbing, as I find them true and 
worthy. I lay aside, as it seems to me, some of the 
useless and trivial excitements of the hour, to concen- 
trate more and more upon the great work of the day. 
I think of you and your own grand object till I feel 
that I, too, can labor and press on without weariness, 
as you are doing, Would that I were with you in 
every deed; in every step forward that you take, my 
heart and hope are with you, and I know that you 
sometimes feel my presence at your side. Your let- 
ters are so hopeful, that I have long since laid aside 
all fear as to your ultimate success, and now have but 
to be patient with the necessarily slow motions of 
your plans. You say the denouement will seem sud- 
den at the last, for much secrecy of detail has been 
necessary, to insure undisturbed action; it cannot be 
too sudden, for it will allow of your immediate return 
to me. I would the diplomatic clock were in my 
keeping for a little while, and I might make its 


ponderous wheels move a little faster towards the 


212 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


hour which shall strike forth the completion of your 
work. Have patience with me, Ernest; these are 
but the harmless ejaculations of my sometimes impa- 
tient spirit—you know that my soul is strong within 
me, and not wholly unworthy to mate with yours. 
Were I with you and able to do battle at your side, 
you should hear nothing but triumphant strains from 
my lips ;—it is the loneliness, the distance, that make 
me a little cowardly at times. When I think of the 
black abyss of ocean that lies between us, and then 
of the long waste of land—a waste to me, though full 
of populous and busy life—my heart indeed grows 
weak and dizzy, and I tremble and shed tears. 

None but your own kind and thoughtful self would 
find time, among so many distracting occupations and 
harassing cares, for such long and interesting accounts 
of your present environments. How do you retain, 
amid so much that is difficult and prosaic, all your 
keen susceptibility to the most delicate and subtle 
manifestations of the Beautiful? How, in the most 
transient glance at the faces around you, can you 


read so much of the character of the individual, and 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 213 


in the rapid movement of your life succeed in show: 
ing forth so clearly your own warm sympathetic 
heart, till you win those who approach you wholly to 
. yourself? I see that you do this, not by means of 
any positive narrative that you set before me, but by 
the frequent mention of kindnesses received, and the 
pleasant nature of every new association that you form. 
Your manner is such a singular mixture of personal 
reserve with frank cordiality, that you first attract 
attention and finally win unlimited confidence. It is, 
perhaps, because you make so few word-professions, 
that people rely so implicitly upon what you do say ; 
and you seem so entirely competent to guard your own 
secrets from intrusive attention, that it is taken for 
granted that you will be quite able to protect those 
which others intrust to you. I watch with intense 
interest your present position, for utterly isolated from 
your own countrymen and thrown upon the hospi- 
tality of foreigners, you must, more than ever, assume 
and assert your own unassisted individuality—that 
individuality which you have always been successful 


in maintaining, in a marked degree, at home. Every 


214 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


detail, however minute, is full of interest to me, and J 
rejoice that you have patience to set them down for 
me with such loving mmuteness. Yours is a love 
that disdains no trifle and fears no labor in the ser- 
vice of the one you love. The harmony of your 
nature is shown not only in the greatness of what 
you accomplish, but in the gracefulness with which 
you adorn the daily life with delicate and almost 
nameless charms. You store your memory so richly 
with images, that every day is a new treasure-house 
for you, and you are as prodigal in spending your 
intellectual wealth as you are indefatigable and suc- 
cessful in adding to it. I seem so near you when [I 
read your letters, the incidents you relate seem to 
- have happened but a moment before—the persons 
you describe seem to have just left the room, the 
atmosphere you breathe in your walks is sweeping at 
the moment past my brow. 

You think then that the suecess of this visit will 
insure your return to the present scene of your labors 
at no distant day, and that I too must make up my 


mind to wander for a while over the face of the earth ? 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 215 


- . The prospect has no pain in it, save the regret insepa: 
rable from the parting with family and friends, and 
even that is wonderfully lessened for me by the 
opportunity of motion, and above all, by the means it 
will give me of still better understanding that which 
must, for the present, absorb your own activity. Iam, 
however, so absorbed in the more immediate prospect 
of your return, that save in the way of practical pre- 
paration for so important a movement, my thought 
stops short at the instant in which you set your foot 
once more within my dwelling. I can as yet see 
nothing beyond that; the sunshine of that moment 
blinds my dazzled eyes; I must wait till I can bear 
the splendor of that picture before I can turn to the 
examination of any other. In the mean time I trust 
allto you. Were it to Sahara’s midmost sands that 
you proposed to take me, I should feel sure that you 
would discover there some fairy oasis, where life 
would be delicious, and healthful change supply itself 
in the midst of eternal sameness. I strive to see 
more and more clearly the people among whom I am 


to cast my lot, and for this purpose your sketches of 


216 Ethel’s Love-Life. © 


character are invaluable. Already I have a select 
circle of friends in your far-off capital, and can tell in 
which direction my heart will quickest take root and 
find nourishment. I am succeeding better and better, 
too, in reconciling others to the impending change, 
and making them regard with less horror a plan 
which involves such a wide and long separation from 
them. At first the dismay was unmitigated, but as 
the idea grows familiar, it asserts its advantages and 
even brings into visibility its charms. So that now, 
instead of being a victim, I am a heroine, in the eyes 
of the home-circle. I have not the heart even to 
check the vastness of the preparations which my 
mother is making for my wardrobe conveniences, or 
to attempt to stem the torrent of practicabilities in 
which she submerges herself with such delight. One 
would fancy that I was going to some far-off island, 
dnly approachable by civilized man once in a score or 
two of years, and that the same island not only 
passed through every variety of climate, from the 
Arctic to the Torrid zone, but that, through all its 


Vicissitudes of temperature and inaccessibility of 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 217 


position, the goddess of Fashion reigned with as 
relentless a sway as that she exercises in mid-season 
at the most gay watering-places. I trust the ward- 
robe fever will subside before the transportation of 
my effects becomes necessary, or that information 
will come, from a source my mother is more in the 
habit of relying upon in these particulars, than she 
is upon my own somewhat random remarks as to my 
clothes-necessities, to persuade her that it will be quite 
possible for me to supply all my needs in my new home. 
You must write her a fashion-letter, Ernest, and 
give her an elaborate description of the toilettes you see 
at Court, and then ingeniously introduce an account of 
the facilities your present home affords for supplying 
any prettinesses, which we in our transatlantic region 
regard as difficult of purchase. If something of this 
sort be not successfully accomplished, you may as well 
make up your mind to leave behind you a poor maid- 
en so encumbered with merchandise asI shall be. I 
am not sure that my dear little marnma, in the exer- 
cise of her superabundant energies, will not wish you 


to send home your own measure, that she may com- 
10 


218 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


mence the accumulation of a mountain of masculine 
garments, which shall be twin to that which now I 
behold rising before my own eyes. ‘All this, however, 
serves as an admirable “escape” for her excitement 
in regard to my leaving her, and which might else 
take a form more painful for me to witness, and more 
sorrowful for her to experience. 

My letter, though so long, has failed to utter half 
my heart would say to you, and were I to write twice 
as much, I should be as far as ever from the end of 
what I wish to say. Read it with your heart as I 
have written it with mine, and then it will not be 
altogether meaningless to you. Good night, and may 
all good angels guard you, and all skies be serene 
above your head. May the day biess you with its 
sunshine, and the night refresh you with its holy 
serenity. More than all, may the sweetest wirds of 
heaven waft you on your way to me, who long for 
you with all the strength and all the fear, that can 
thrill through a loving and devoted heart. 3 
ETHEL. 


LETTER ELEVENTH. 


Ou, Ernest! can such pleasant words be true? Have 
I really only one week more of waiting, after all this 
long and weary time of absence? ‘The letter telling 
me of your safe arrival reached me the same day 
that the papers announced the successful issue of 
your public mission, and I did not know how much 
pride was mingled in my love for you, till I felt the 
throb of exultation within me, as my father read 
aloud the words of praise with which your name 
was coupled. But my first, and strongest, and hap- 
piest thought is, that you are at home again, and 
soon to be with me. This thrills me through and 
through with renovated life, and fills me with a joy 
for which I find no fitting words. I think I should 
love you quite as well if no one but myself ever 


knew how truly great and good you are; but in my 


220 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


present genial and beneficent mood, I do not find it 
in my heart to quarrel with the world for having ) 
also found you out, and greeted you with its honors. 
While I knew you to be upon the way, I was 
miserably restless and anxious for your safety; 
every blast seemed to murmur of a storm at sea; 
every newspaper seemed to be freighted with tidings 
of some new disaster; every face to betray some 
restrained horror. All omens assailed my timorous 
heart, grown superstitious for your beloved sake. 
I was a coward in the sight of Heaven, and trem- 
bled lest the providence of God should fail me in 
the hour of my need. I should be ashamed to tell 
you all my pusillanimous imaginings, were it not 
that you, too, are tenderly susceptible to alarms for 
those you love, and know to what extremity of 
anguish, and blasphemy of terror, prolonged sus- 
pense will drive a loving heart. Thank God, you 
are safe, heart of my heart, life of my life! And 
yet, oh Ernest, I was brave, amid all my fears, for I 
dared to look’ steadily at a woe that now I tremble 


even to name. I gazed through the long night- 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 22) 


hours upon that huge steamer, bearing on through 
darkness and storm its precious freight of human 
life, all concentrated for me in one beloved form. 
I dreamed of danger in a thousand shapes; I lived 
through agonies of dread; I saw all fearful sights 
of death, and I grew rigid in despair, for I still 
looked on with fascinated gaze. At one word, all 
these fears are dissipated, and I am as full of joy 
as then of misery. And now that I am at peace, 
and know you to be safe and well, my heart grows 
proud and glad at your success, and thrills and 
glows to know that you are also happy. I did not 
lack for sympathy in my nervous fears, nor do I 
now in my delight. The household is alive, from 
first to last, with your name, and the note of pre- 
paration for your advent echoes from all quarters. 
The general satisfaction seeks expression in the 
elaborations of hospitality, and were you to bring 
with you a whole regiment of “German mercena- 
ries,” instead of the one “slight, pale student” you 
describe, they would be made welcome, and all their 


wants amply supplied, so active is, at present, the 


222 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


practical element in the whole ménage. And there 
is pleasant meaning in all this activity, and an 
under-current of love and sympathy beneath this 
bustle, which makes it very welcome to me. 

I have written to you long chapters of the past, 
dear Ernest, but that was when the passing moment 
held no immediate expectation, and was fraught with 
no especial meaning. While you were far off, my 
mind went backward without reluctance, and memory 
led me by the hand, a willing visitor, among the 
chambers of the past; but now the present fills me 
with occupation, and the future thrills me with 
anticipation. Now that you are coming, I have 
thoughts for nothing else; I count the hours again 
and again, glad at each repetition to drop off one 
more from the shortening chain; I become excited 
when I sit down to think; I catch myself smiling, 
when no word has been spoken; and as I passed the 
mirror this morning, I saw a blush rise to my cheek, 
so vivid that, had you been present, you must have 
ceased to chide me for my excessive paleness. Verily, 


the heart plays strange pranks with the features, 


Ethel’s Love-Life.  . 223 


Krnest, for the face which greets me from the mirror 
now, is far other than the woe-worn, anxious visage 
it has shown me of late. Happiness is a skilful 
physician, and the frame grows strong and the eye 
brilliant, when the heart is light. Your letter tells 
me that you are bronzed by travel, and that your 
stalwart form and broad shoulders will, more than 
ever, form a striking contrast to my own somewhat 
petite proportions. I like it thus, my giant lover. I 
would have you thus stalwart and thus strong; I am 
glad that health glows upon your cheek, and that 
you tremble at no wind that blows. The picture 
that you sent my mother, produced a great sensation. 
The foreign dress was pronounced wonderfully be- 
coming, and the only comment which my regard for 
your modest diffidence allows me to repeat to you, 
was that of my cousin Emily, who said, ‘How 
extremely handsome he would be, if he would not 
wear such an enormous beard!” The beard, as you 
may remember, ranks with her among the cardinal 
sins, 


I try to beguile the intervening days with a thou- 


224 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


sand little arrangements for your pleasure when you 
come, and thus give myself the pleasant task of 
recalling all your peculiar tastes, and bringing you 
continually before me in different attitudes. All the 
important preparations for the grand event are 
taken perforce from off my hands, by my busy 
mother, who, with half a smile and half a sigh, bids 
me not to lighten these her last labors for her daugh- 
ter, and not to make myself weary and pale, and so 
win her a scolding from one who is coming. My 
poor Mother! happy as she really is in her child’s 
happiness, her heart yearns for me when I am away, 
and she cannot but miss me sadly when I leave her. 
But she gives me hopeful and earnest words of coun- 
sel, and blesses me with sweet and loving tenderness. 
She will have two children instead of one, henceforth, 
for she already loves you as a son. She is very 
proud, too, of the distinction you have achieved, and 
tells your story with infinite enjoyment of its pictu- 
resque details. You will be received with all the 
honors of a victorious general, and must prepare 


yourself for a little tiresome admiration from our 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 225 


outside acquaintance. I shall keep the day of your 
arrival secret, that | may be sure of having you a 
little while to myself, —I cannot let others see you 
till I have satisfied my own eager eyes. My father 
looks at me so fondly in these last days, that my 
eyes overflow with tears; thoughts of the home I 
am to leave assume a tone of melancholy, as the 
little daily pleasantnesses are renewed to form them- 
selves into farewell memories; those about me 
say many common-places about past freedom and 
coming cares—but, for myself, I feel no sadness, 
and I regret no freedom—I am lifted above the 
routine of my daily thought, and breathe a higher 
atmosphere wherein I see things in truer propor- 
tions. My true freedom commenced with my love for 
you, and sadness finds no place in the earnest hope- 
fulness with which I look forward to my life with you 
and its wider opportunities for action. I have had 
enough of seclusion, enough of contemplation; my 
heart has learned its own secrets well, and my 
thoughts have dwelt lang enough upon the inner 


aspects of my soul to be ready to commence, almost 
10% 


226 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


to crave for, something on which to expend its accu- 
mulated energies. In this conscious need of new 
expression in outward life, I rejoice that your honor 
and your duty call you away from study, away even 
from quiet. After your.brief vacation, which, thank 
heaven, comes just in this heart of summer’s warmth 
and beauty, and during which we will enjoy to its 
utmost our long-planned seashore delights, we will 
enter cheerfully on your new sphere, and find therein 
as much of mutual love and mutual sympathy, and 
help in the active and varied life that: beckons to you, 
as we have already enjoyed in those quiet hours, 
which have given us so fully and entirely unto each 
other. I might have trembled at the prospect of a 
busy life with its mtrusive urgencies, had it followed 
immediately upon our first avowals of love, and ab- 
sorbed us before we had had time for studying each 
other’s natures, and growing into each other’s hearts. 
The time of waiting, which seemed then to stretch 
tediously far into the future, has proved of infinite 
value to us, for in it we have learned as well as loved 


each other, and now we understand all our points of 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 229 


sympathy and likeness, and see clearly, and without 
exaggeration, all the peculiarities of individual tem- 
perament, which, well understood, will serve only to 
create a pleasant and healthful motion in our life-cur 
rent, but which, ignored or half comprehended, might 
have caused pain and surprise. Do you know how 
great cause for rejoicing we have that our tastes and 
habits of life are as similar as they are decided—that 
our minute antagonisms are so unusually few? ‘The 
number is small of those, who, even in loving most 
fondly, and finding their happiness most completely in 
each other, have not to ignore their own separate tastes, 
and change their own personal habitudes, if they 
would attain to entire communion with those they 
love. One or the other must lay aside something of 
himself and assume new tastes and interest himself in 
new pursuits, which, save through their attraction to 
the other, would be utterly devoid of charm. And 
poor human nature, though in its moments of exalta- 
tion it welcomes and glories in opportunities for self- 
abnegation, and imagines that always its greatest 


delight must be to live only in the sensations of its 


228 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


beloved, yet after a little while it grows weary of 
flying against an unnatural atmosphere, the wings 
droop, the breath fails, and it turns of necessity to its 
old and easy course, mourning that its beloved must 
by the same instinct pursue a different one. I have 
often seen those who love each other very deeply, 
quite unable, from intrinsic unlikeness of nature, to 
enjoy much in each other’s companionship, obliged to 
shut out all action and all movement, and to restrict 
themselves to the simple act of loving, or to lose the 
power of continuing side by side. But we, who before 
we met were both upon the same path, whose daily 
habits of thought and life were strangely similar, and 
whose likes and dislikes seem to be magnetically 
united, ah, we hardly know our blessedness and the 
peace and pleasure of which our daily life may be full. 
Now, that we not only love, but know each other, we 
may go out into the great world, and meet, unfaltering, 
all the manifold influences, which, with less of love and 
less of knowledge, might have been fearful antagonists 
for us. Weshall go forward side by side, you sustain- 


ing me at your own height, and the confidence between 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 229 


us shall be, as it has ever been, entire and unreserved. 
You will not even disdain my help, for you have 
taught me how to be strong and helpful. I would be 
not merely the companion of your leisure hours, but 
would share your hardest labor, and be by you in 
your busiest and most anxious seasons. You gave 
me the deepest pleasure that my heart can feel, 
dearest, when you told me how very much you 
expect from me. 

Claudia asks me if I do not tremble at the thought 
of the social ordeal through which I am to pass, and 
shrink from the difficult duties of the position I am 
to assume. I trust it is something better than a vain 
self-confidence which impels me to say that I feel no 
fear, but rather a secret joy. I confess my suscepti- 
bility to ambition for you, and I rejoice that you are 
to be placed where your talents will have full scope 
for their activity, your heart be able to carry out 
some of the grand schemes which it has planned. 
Not for worlds would I utter one word of dissuasion 
from.such a noble career, but gladly encourage, and 


share in all that it implies of effort and of self-denial. 


230 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


I believe this to be no vulgar ambition, for your 
sphere of usefulness increases with its elevation, and 
in your plans there enter all the most glorious ele- 
ments of human progress. God’s blessing will be on 
us as we strive diligently and truly in the path to 
which He points us. 

The hours of my maiden life are ebbing fast away, 
the ties of kindred lose their hold upon my outer life, 
as the new and more absorbing tie comes nearer and 
nearer to claim my obedience. I am surprised at the 
serenity of my own faith in our future; I feel no 
exaggerated emotional excitement, no nervous doubts 
and fears; I dream no visions of impossible, super- 
human bliss, but calmly and clearly I look upon a 
future which stretches out before me, a future such as 
I would have it, full of active energy, of variety, 
of labor, full too, as I believe, of success and of noble 
rewards. Isee myself leaning through all upon your 
faithful arm, resting in your tried love, and protected 
by a strong, true heart. I find in you the consum- 
mation of my: being—the development of my mind in 


your grand intellectual nature, the fulfilment of my 


Ethel’s Love-Life. 231 


heart’s deepest yearnings in your noble and generous 
manliness. I behold no sky without a cloud, no 
perennial summer-time of flowers and of sunshine; no 
fairy-land inanities woo me with their blandishments, 
but I see a path which, though somewhat dusty, and 
world-travelled, has still its charms and its promises, 
and on which we can walk erect, and side by side; it 
leads us where, as strong and willing and hopeful 
souls, ready to put forth our strength in all worthy 
effort, we would fain go. We leave the past behind 
us, keeping only its lessons near our hearts; hence- 
forth every step shall be for us an onward one. The 
dawn is past, and we have had all that it could give 
of crimson clouds and golden mists; now we are 
strong for the mid-day toil, and turn our faces to- 
wards the kindling glories of the western skies. 
Though still young in years, we have both lived 
much, thought much, suffered much. We have lost 
no power of keen enjoyment, but rather learned to 
know how to enjoy; we have lost no faith, but rather 
won a firmer hold on all high and noble things; we 


have lost no strength, but have rather been disciplined 


232 Ethel’s Love-Life. 


to a more skilful and successful warfare; the past has 
been for us a prophecy and preparation, not a defeat 
or a disappointment. And now, each completed in 
the other’s being, each living in the other’s life, each 
throbbing in the other’s quickened pulsation, we will 
give no empty thanks for our great happiness, no 
noisy welcome to our joy. ‘The whole of our future 
shall be consecrated unto noblest uses, and our happi- 
ness be equalled by our earnest labor. Our thanks- 
givings shall mingle with aspirations, and in our 
union, we will lift our hearts above themselves. Be- 
fore the world we give ourselves unto each other, 
before our God we give ourselves to Him. Oh, loyal 
heart, it is through you that I see Him, and it is He 
that led you unto me to fill my life with beauty and 
with love. My heart already hears your footsteps, 
and leaps to meet you and clasp you to itself. 


ETHEL SUTHERLAND, 





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